VANCOUVER, British Columbia — This was the sort of performance that makes you forget the Islanders are playing without nearly a third of their regular lineup, the kind that makes you think maybe there is something sustainable here.
The Islanders went into the building of a playoff team, and they owned the puck, tilting the ice by playing a hardworking game below the hashes and establishing a forecheck that had been missing two nights prior in Edmonton.
They beat the Canucks, 5-2, a final score which, if anything, understated their performance the same way the 4-3 overtime loss to the Oilers Tuesday night overstated it.
“I think we’ve been building our game toward a night like this where we put it all together and stuck with a lot of things,” Anders Lee said. “Whether it is the power play, stuff like that. Kind of all facets of the game were big for us tonight, and I think that’s why we played a really solid 60 minutes.”
In doing so, the Islanders extended a nascent points streak to five games with wins in three of them, all coming without Mat Barzal, Anthony Duclair, Alexander Romanov, Adam Pelech or Mike Reilly. Over a six-game stretch without that quintet in which the stated goal has been to keep their heads above water, the Islanders are 3-1-2 for a .750 points percentage.
It’s rarely looked as good as it did Thursday, and if the NHL counted all losses equally, it would be .500. But to those assertions, the retorts should be, ‘Who cares?’ and, ‘They don’t.’
And if the Islanders can play like this regularly, then you can throw all that out anyway.
“I like to be half-full [more] than half-empty in my glass,” said coach Patrick Roy before clarifying that yes, it is a glass of water. “But anyway, my point is this: We are very confident right now.”
Consecutive goals by Scott Mayfield and Pierre Engvall early in the second period broke a 1-1 tie, with Mayfield’s point shot deflecting off a Vancouver stick and leaving Kevin Lankinen out of position just 14 seconds into the period.
At the 2:40 mark, Engvall, who played his best game since returning from AHL exile, got to the net and put in Simon Holmstrom’s rebound.
The game sat at 3-1 heading into the third period despite the Islanders quadrupling Vancouver’s shot count (24-6), prime territory for the sort of collapse that’s become a blue and orange motif.
Indeed, a push did come for the Canucks, who finally put some pressure on the Islanders and forced Semyon Varlamov into action in the third period.
But Varlamov, who didn’t have much of anything to do for most of the game, looked anything but cold and finished the night with 24 saves.
Bo Horvat, playing his second game back in Vancouver, put the nail in the proverbial coffin at the 11:42 mark of the third, blowing through the neutral zone and feeding Lee in front of the net — an assist that surely meant something to the former Canucks captain.
Noah Dobson added an empty-netter to bring it to 5-1 before Tyler Myers added a consolation goal for Vancouver.
“I feel like we did a pretty good job all night,” Ryan Pulock told The Post. “We did a good job of possessing the puck down low, our forwards did a great job of holding onto it and cycling the puck, and I thought they had a few shifts, maybe, where they were in our zone for some time, but I thought we did a good job of keeping it outside and just muscling it out when we had to.”
From the start, the Islanders had played like a team looking to prove something after a sloppy performance two nights prior.
The question was whether they could sustain it for all 60 minutes.
The answer was yes and then some.
The answer was that the Islanders just played their best game of the season so far.
“Everybody played so well, it’s hard for me to single out anybody because everybody played real solid,” Roy said. “Defensively, offensively, I thought we were on the puck, sharp, good forecheck, good [offensive zone]. Defensively, we defended pretty well.”
If they can keep it going, then watch out.
