LAS VEGAS — Two in a row ain’t much. But for the Islanders, you best believe it means a whole lot.
On the same Thursday when general manager Lou Lamoriello expressed his belief the Islanders can turn their season around, the team responded by beating the top team in the NHL, handing the Golden Knights just their fifth defeat at home of the season by a 4-0 margin.
As importance goes, the narrative and symbolic implications of this one felt much larger than the practical ones.
Yes, the Islanders kept pace with the chasing pack in the Eastern Conference, staying five points back of a wild-card spot as the Blue Jackets and Penguins both won as well.
But the Islanders aren’t in much of a position to scoreboard-watch if they can’t figure themselves out first.
That requires playing consistently, proving they can hang with anyone in the league and putting together the sort of winning streak that can surge them into a playoff spot.
Leaving Vegas with two points in hand — just the third time all season they have won back-to-back games — counts as a major step in that direction, if the Isles follow it by closing out this three-game road trip with a win in Utah on Saturday.
“I thought we played a really good defensive game,” Anders Lee said. “I know they had some zone time at times, but I thought we protected the slot pretty well and our ‘D’ had great gaps throughout the game. I thought that was a big difference, cause this is a big transition team, great on the rush. ‘D’ had great sticks at the blue line, stopped a lot of pucks right there, forcing them to dump it.”
Indeed, this was a classic sort of road victory.
The Islanders mucked up the game, played low-event, physical hockey and held down a highly-powered Golden Knights attack.
Compared to the shot-happy win over the Bruins a few nights prior, it was a 180 in terms of entertainment value.
Of course, nobody was complaining.
A win is a win, and a road win over the best team in the NHL is a damn good win, no matter the details.
And, whatever the Islanders’ shot totals said, holding Vegas to all of five high-danger chances at five-on-five is at least a defensively excellent performance.
“We’re trying to show the fans the best game we can play,” Alexander Romanov said after putting in a pair of secondary assists over 20:58 of ice. “Today was a pretty good example.”
The Islanders had just 12 shots through the game’s first 40 minutes, but made the most of their chances to enter the third with a 3-0 lead.
A slow-starting first period featured the Islanders temporarily going down 1-0 before Tomas Hertl’s power play goal was overturned following coach Patrick Roy’s challenge for offside.
That was as close as Vegas got to putting its imprint on the game.
The subsequently successful penalty kill sparked some life into a group which had just two shots on goal in the game’s first 15:07, and Lee capitalized on a Vegas turnover in its own zone by putting the Isles up 1-0 at the 17:04 mark.
They never looked back, following it up with a pair of goals from Brock Nelson and Bo Horvat in the second, with the former breaking a 17-game goal-less streak.
Outside of Jack Eichel forcing Ilya Sorokin into a diving save late in the second, there weren’t many moments where the lead looked in danger — and Casey Cizikas cemented it with an empty-netter late in the third.
“Today, we proved to ourselves that we can beat a team who’s already in the playoffs,” Romanov said. “First or second place, and we can shut them down.”
The Islanders might have already believed they could do that. But believing and seeing are two different things.
This was just one game, and as far as the big picture goes, Lamoriello’s insistence the Islanders can still turn it around still looks more based on hope than anything else.
But if he ends up being right, what happened Thursday might just be a landmark in the Islanders’ season.
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