It should not be any particular mark of success to hold a third-period lead at home against a last-place team.
But for the Islanders, it is a reason to let out a deep breath in relief.
Finally, they found the 60-minute game they have so often lacked this season and played their best hockey in the third period, taking a two-goal lead against the Blue Jackets and turning it into a 7-3 win, their third in four games.
Given the narrative thread around this team, it almost feels like a typo to note that they now have points in 10 of their last 11 games.
But so many of those games have been overtime losses in which they led going into the third period that it has been hard to judge the last few weeks a success.
Thursday looked like it was headed toward the same old disaster early in the third.
Adam Fantilli scored for the Blue Jackets just 88 seconds into the period, depositing a loose puck into the back of the net after Scott Mayfield couldn’t get a stick on it in the low slot.
That cut the lead to 4-3 and felt like it could be the beginning of the end for the Islanders’ hopes of getting two points.
But instead of folding, and instead of sitting back in their own zone to invite pressure, the Islanders kept getting up the ice.
And at 5:33 of the period, Mat Barzal banged in Bo Horvat’s feed to the slot for his second goal of the night, getting the lead back to two goals.
And when Horvat recovered his own rebound and backhanded it into the net with 8:29 to go in the game to make it 6-3, finally there was some confidence emanating from the stands at UBS Arena.
Then Horvat went and scored again 20 seconds later to make it 7-3.
Surely the Islanders would not blow this game. Surely the Islanders did not blow this game.
The night’s decisive points came in what was shaping up to be the worst period of the evening for the Islanders.
They were booed throughout a second period that the Blue Jackets were dominating, with Emil Bemstrom and Fantilli scoring a pair of goals to put Columbus into a 2-1 lead.
The “Fire Lambert” chants that appeared a few weeks ago at UBS Arena made a reappearance.
And when the Islanders finally cleared the zone after an extended stretch of Columbus pressure, they were received with a Bronx cheer.
And then things turned on a dime, as Cal Clutterbuck got free in the slot and banged in Hudson Fasching’s feed to tie the game at two with 5:30 to go in the second.
That opened the floodgates for the Islanders.
Just over four minutes later, Barzal’s one-timer gave them a 3-2 lead.
And before the period was over, Kyle Palmieri doubled it, tapping in a tic-tac-toe feed on the power play that went from Barzal to Brock Nelson to Palmieri at the left post.
The first period, in which Pierre Engvall’s backdoor tap-in put the Islanders up 1-0, had looked a lot more like the sort of hockey they wanted to play.
But no one was going to complain when the Islanders held a two-goal lead at the second intermission.
The real test, though, was always going to come in the third.
That is where the Islanders have been nothing short of disastrous all year and it is where they let a 4-1 lead slip into a 5-4 overtime loss against the Sharks just two nights prior.
Anything short of locking things down would have prompted the same cycle of self-doubt that has plagued the Islanders all year, sent the crowd back into consternation and thrown the team into a fit of worry.
This time, they found a way to avoid it.