LOS ANGELES — A work-in-progress Islanders roster delivered a work-in-progress win.
On the same day they were reintegrating Matias Maccelli and Ryan Pulock back into the lineup, head coach Pete DeBoer had to remake his lineup on the fly after Jean-Gabriel Pageau left morning skate with a lower-body injury, blunting what would have been unmitigatedly happy news.
Imperfect as this was, the Islanders can’t do much complaining.
“It wasn’t pretty, but we got the job done,” Bo Horvat told The Post after his empty-netter put a bow on the 5-2 win over the Kings. “Different guys stepped up in different ways. … All-around great team effort with guys out of the lineup.”
Breaking a nascent four-game losing streak was ultimately a lot more than the how of it. In part because this was a strange circumstance, in part because there’s optimism that Pageau’s injury is minor and in part because this was a group that really needed two points.
So, at least in that sense, who cares if it was pretty?
Certainly, it was an improvement over how the Islanders played a few nights prior in San Jose.
“I think we got away from some of the entails of our game in San Jose with the puck, turning it over and defensively, some of the detail,” coach Pete DeBoer said. “We did a much better job of that tonight.”
Still, this was the sort of West Coast game that ought to get you an award if you stayed up until the wee hours to watch it in New York. Both teams played ugly, the refereeing was ugly, the crowd was sparse, and there was a delay for broken glass along the boards. The Islanders, one minute into a power play during the third period, used their timeout. It was that sort of night.
The Islanders could at least be happy about Pulock getting right back to his level in his first game back from a shoulder injury, picking up two secondary assists, playing a solid role on the breakout and contributing to a defense that looked much more comfortable with his presence in it.
“You want to help chip in,” Pulock said. “Obviously, I know my game, and defensively, doing a good job is my first priority. You want to bring some offense, you want to carry that into the O Zone and chip in a little bit, especially when you’re sitting out a little while.”
Horvat was more straight to the point.
“He was phenomenal for us,” he said of Pulock.
So too was Victor Eklund, with the young Swede’s connection with Brayden Schenn showing up again. Eklund drove the net to finish Schenn’s cross-crease feed on the rush at 5:35 of the second to extend his scoring streak to four games, the longest for an Islanders rookie since Anthony Beauvillier in 2018. That followed Schenn’s goal at 5:50 of the first when he cleaned up the garbage on Pulock’s tipped shot.
Undergirding those moments, as well as Matthew Schaefer’s power-play goal at 12:56 of the first, was that after two periods, the Islanders had just nine shots on goal. Their puck management remained poor in spots, and they let the Kings back into a game they led 3-1 by taking consecutive penalties that led to Quinton Byfield scoring at 5-on-3 to bring them within one going into the third.
The saving grace of this game for the Islanders, though, was that the Kings played worse than they did.
Instead of seizing the opportunity they’d been granted, the home team handed it right back. Just 39 seconds into the third, Simon Holmstrom ripped one past Darcy Kuemper from the slot to bring the lead back to two.
It may not have been all that inspiring, but the Islanders never needed the cushion, with Ilya Sorokin turning aside 26 of 28 shots and Horvat’s empty-netter sealing it. Thirteen high-danger chances allowed at five-on-five, though, made clear that there is still plenty to work on.
“Third period, obviously the goal helps, but we got more aggressive,” Schenn told The Post. “We made a couple more cleaner plays with the puck, which led to us playing in the O Zone more. Third was our best.”
A win is a win, and on the heels of a losing streak, that feels especially true.
