Back on home ice, back out of their stupor and back to NHL-.500.
Saturday night is not going to change a big-picture outlook in which the Islanders have started the season far below their standard.
But they needed this 3-1 win over the Blues, to prove something to themselves as much as for any other reason after three straight gut-punch losses on the road, each one worse than the last.
To their credit, this victory did offer a reminder that the Islanders can still grind a game out, and even that they can, in fact, hold a lead.
Doing that on a consistent enough basis to matter is still up in the air. But if the Islanders are going to start building winning habits, it needs to start somewhere.
Step 1: Building on a lead, perhaps with a power-play goal.
Check.
That came courtesy of Brock Nelson, who took the demon of 1-0 leads blown in Calgary and Detroit and brushed it right off the Islanders’ shoulders late in the second period.
After Blues defenseman Ryan Suter went off for tripping, Nelson converted the team’s first power-play goal since the win over Vancouver eight days ago — and his first of the season — with a one-timer from his knees after Max Tsyplakov’s feed to the slot from behind the net.
What was a strenuous 1-0 became a lighter 2-0, with the Islanders feeling like they just might be able to carry over two periods’ worth of strong defense and forechecking into the third.
Ilya Sorokin, who earned his 100th victory, was on his game, too, recording a big-time stop on Nathan Walker late in the second to preserve the two-goal lead heading into the third.
Any notion that the Islanders would ride that feeling into a straightforward victory, though, was shattered less than a minute into the third.
Isaiah George took a cross-checking penalty 35 seconds in and 10 seconds after that, Jake Neighbours snapped one in from the left post to make it 2-1.
Noah Dobson appeared to give the Islanders a reprieve with 8:27 to go when he scored from the right circle, but that was quickly brought back for goaltender interference after a Blues challenge, with Kyle Palmieri visibly impeding Jordan Binnington.
On another night, that might have set the Islanders up for an even bigger punch to the gut.
On this one, they brushed it right off and kept going.
And at five-on-six, instead of completing the collapse, Palmieri added his second goal of the game into the empty net to seal two badly needed points.
The Islanders set a tone early on in the game, quickly establishing a forecheck and possessing the bulk of the puck in the first period. They took a 1-0 lead at the 18:51 mark when Palmieri ripped one past Binnington from the slot after the Islanders forced a turnover in the neutral zone.
It was low-event hockey, the kind you associate with the Islanders and the kind they failed to convert into wins throughout last week.
You couldn’t have been blamed at that point for figuring that whatever the Islanders did early in the game might not last. If you’ve watched this team in the last week, or in the last year, you know it has rarely done so.
Saturday proved an exception to the rule.
Now the Islanders need to rewrite the rulebook.
