The Islanders are sputtering into the NHL’s three-week Olympic break, that much is clear.
You can see them night after night, treading water and trying to get results better than their play warrants.
The thing is, they have a way of finding a way.
And that’s just what they did on Tuesday night in a crucial match against the Penguins, overcoming themselves and three different Pittsburgh leads for a mad 5-4 win at UBS Arena on Bo Horvat’s overtime goal.
The win kept them tied on points with the Penguins for second in the Metro Division, though Pittsburgh is still ahead in the standings with two games in hand, and kept the Capitals and Blue Jackets both four points behind for third.
All night, it looked like the Islanders were veering toward a third straight defeat that would have warranted some alarm bells.
They were struggling to generate a forecheck or sustain pressure. There was little physicality in their game.
Anthony Duclair was benched early in the night, and the list of players who could have followed him was not at all short.
Pittsburgh led just 3-2 entering the third, which often amounts to nothing in the NHL.
It felt, though, like there was a measure of good fortune in the Islanders being that close, even after Bryan Rust’s sharp-angle shot broke a two-all tie at 14:09 of the second.
It took until the final 20 minutes, though, for the game to go truly madcap.
After Bo Horvat and Matthew Schaefer had scored the Islanders’ first two goals, it was only fitting that their third superstar, Mat Barzal, would score their third.
Barzal connected on a blast from the top of the zone 8:35 into the third to tie the game at three and give the Islanders some badly needed momentum.
The momentum lasted all of 2:03 before Justin Brazeau’s tip from Brett Kulak gave Pittsburgh the lead back and made it the third defense pair out of three for the Islanders to be on the ice for a goal against.
The Islanders weren’t done yet, though, as Ryan Pulock — who, to that point, was having a rough night — connected on a wrist shot to tie it back up with just under five minutes left.
That got it to the extra period, where Horvat scored to win it, handing the Islanders two of their guttiest points of the season.
The Islanders had taken a 2-1 lead in the first with goals from Horvat and Schaefer after Anthony Mantha had opened the scoring. Under the hood, though, it was less encouraging.
Duclair was on the ice for Mantha’s goal and played just one more shift before sitting the rest of the first and the entire second.
Goals from both defensemen notwithstanding, Schaefer’s pair with Pulock spent far too much time hemmed in and was on the ice for goals from Egor Chinakhov and Rust in the second.
The Carson Soucy-Scott Mayfield pair has yet to click and spent nearly the entire night on the back foot, as did the fourth line, as did Jean-Gabriel Pageau, whose linemates shifted with Duclair’s benching.
Even Sorokin, usually the Islanders’ rock, let in a rare bad goal from Rust.
Two points doesn’t erase those worries, and truth be told, they’ve been building for the better part of a month.
But the Islanders have just one more game to get through, and then comes a three-week exhale in which they’ll hope rest can solve at least a chunk of their problems.
So, again, they punted away the worries for another day.
