DETROIT — Don’t call the Islanders dead yet.
It might prove too little and too late in the end, but they are coming home with four points out of four from a crucial two-game road swing and their first real momentum in three weeks after beating the Red Wings, 5-3, on Thursday night.
A playoff deficit that looked nearly out of reach at the start of the week now stands at just five points to the third-place Flyers. It’s not an ideal spot to be in on March 1.
But with the Flyers expected to sell at the trade deadline, the Islanders look in position to pounce.
Going into the final period, this had all the makings of the sort of game the Islanders have let fall through their fingers too many times this season.
They did not have enough possession, especially after taking the lead.
The still-new top six appeared to be figuring each other out, though the bottom two lines were further along the learning curve.
The other shoe felt like it was going to drop, especially after a second period the Islanders spent on their heels.
In fact, it appeared to do just that when Patrick Kane took the opening faceoff of the third period, went down the ice and scored just 10 seconds in, tying the game at two.
But instead of reverting to a defensive shell, taking a penalty or doing any of the other things that have lost the Islanders games in similar spots this year, the Isles got on a power play of their own and scored — with Brock Nelson wiring one past Alex Lyon from the right circle — within five minutes to take the lead right back.
The seesaw took one more turn from there, when Olli Maatta finished a long offensive-zone shift for Detroit by scoring his second goal of the game from the right circle at the 10:49 mark of the third to re-tie the game.
But again, the Islanders had an answer, with Mathew Barzal banking the puck off an out-of-position Lyon from below the right circle with 6:02 to go.
Holding that lead would not come easily, with the Red Wings continually threatening.
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But Ilya Sorokin was up to the task in a sterling 23-save performance that included an out-of-nowhere left-toe stop on Kane’s chance that appeared to be going into an open net at the 15:47 mark of the last period.
This was the Vezina-contending version of Sorokin, right when the Islanders needed him, in a victory capped off by Pierre Engvall’s empty-net goal — the first of the season for the Islanders.
The Islanders jumped out to a 2-0 lead over an opening 20 minutes that did not look all that great, but ended in their favor thanks in large part to a pair of successful penalty kills that saw Sorokin get his left pad out on Robby Fabbri right before the first intermission.
Just prior to that four-on-five stint, the new-look bottom-six had struck again, with Casey Cizikas tipping in Adam Pelech’s shot from the left point for a 2-0 lead.
The Islanders had scored first when Nelson mugged Ben Chiarot deep in the Red Wings zone and scored at the 12:11 mark of the period.
Maatta’s one-timer from the left circle cut the lead in half at the 5:04 mark and, for a big chunk of the period, the Islanders were scrambling in their own zone and failing to possess the puck.
It appeared they had settled down by the intermission after stringing together a few offensive-zone shifts. Those shifts, while not making a difference on the scoresheet, proved crucial in the result.
Three weeks ago, the last time the Islanders won consecutive games, it looked like they were finally turning a corner after beating a pair of playoff teams.
Then they proceeded to lose two straight games on home ice before blowing a lead outdoors to the Rangers at MetLife Stadium — the same pattern that’s befallen them for a while now.
Getting back into position is going to take more than a week of playing good hockey for a team that has been nothing but inconsistent since mid-December.
The big bad Bruins come into UBS Arena on Saturday in a game that stands as a litmus test before the schedule gets road-heavy, albeit against lighter opposition.
No one said this would be easy.
This is the position the Islanders have put themselves in.
They took a couple steps toward climbing out this week. But there is still a long way to go.