It will be a long time before anything is safe, but with each passing game, the playoffs seem like a more and more likely destination for the Islanders. 

After Saturday’s controlled and clinical 4-1 victory over the Red Wings, the Isles are 4-1-1 since losing Mat Barzal, 32-25-8 on the season and have two more points in their pocket over the slew of wild-card opposition below them.

Since they’ve played more games than everyone else in the league, games in hand are still a problem, and the Isles can ill afford a losing streak.

But they are making the equation better and better just about every time they take the ice. 

This is the week to make a statement with games against Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Washington to follow Saturday’s match against Detroit — in other words, four chances against direct opposition in the race.

And in their first chance, the Isles let their play do the talking, coming back in the third period to win a game they had the better of for just about all 60 minutes. 

It took just 2:11 of play in the third period for the Islanders to finally convert a chance into a goal, as Zach Parise buried a rebound off Kyle Palmieri’s shot to tie the game at one.

By the 4:39 mark, the Isles had taken the lead, with Anders Lee deflecting Hudson Fasching’s shot past Magnus Hellberg. 

From there, the two mandates for the Islanders were to avoid taking penalties and keep doing what they’d been doing. 

Check, check and add Kyle Palmieri’s tip off a Noah Dobson power-play blast for good measure, which made it 3-1 with a hair under five minutes to go.

Oh, and a second goal from Lee with 2:38 left in the game, making the final score a bit more reflective of the gameflow. 

Dylan Larkin gave Detroit a 1-0 lead at 18:59 of the second, converting a power-play opportunity after the Islanders lost him in front of their own net.

Despite the failure to score until the third period, though, the Islanders had the better of this game throughout, nearly doubling Detroit’s shot total for all 60 minutes. 

As has been the trend following Barzal’s injury, the Islanders continued to play structured and sound defensive hockey.

They dominated possession and kept Ilya Sorokin’s job easy at five-on-five, forcing Hellberg to work in Detroit’s net. 

After Larkin’s goal, it looked like a repeat of Tuesday, when the Isles failed to get two points in Minnesota despite a similar effort.

But this time in the third period, they got the goals to reward a strong game, and walked away with two points to show for it. 

The Isles will need to deal with the stress of having played more games than their competition until the very end of the season — a product of a packed early part of the schedule.

The more games they win, though, the less stressful that equation becomes and the more likely it is that they get into the playoffs for the first time since 2021. 

Much as this week can still change everything, and much as they still have a slim margin for error, things are going according to plan right now.

The Islanders don’t look like world-beaters, but they do look like a playoff team.