COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Islanders are underwhelming.
The Islanders have won three straight games.
The Islanders are in a playoff spot.
The prevailing sentiment of this season has been bizarredom from the start, so with just six games to go, maybe it’s not surprising that the charge to the postseason does not exactly inspire like the Charge of the Light Brigade.
But the British army did lose in the end, and after Islanders 4, Blue Jackets 2, the Isles have a three-game win streak in hand and can taste the postseason after passing the Capitals, who lost to Pittsburgh simultaneously, for the second wild-card spot.
It doesn’t matter how it looks.
They are getting the job done.
This one came in spite of a scruffy performance in which the Islanders never were quite able to impose themselves beyond a few shifts at a time against a Columbus side that sits in last place, is playing for nothing and was missing a laundry list of its best players.
Making his second straight start, Ilya Sorokin finished with 25 stops on 27 shots, but his rebound control still looked like a persistent issue.
In the end, it didn’t matter.
This fun-house mirror of a game entered the final period tied at two, all but guaranteeing another stressful finish for an Islanders team that has probably developed a collective ulcer or two by now.
After Jet Greaves had come on in relief of an injured Danill Tarasov and played a perfect 14-save second period in just his fifth appearance in an NHL net, there was an underbelly of worry that this might just be going the wrong way for the visitors.
But 3:21 into the final period, Noah Dobson finally solved Greaves with a blast from the right circle that rang off the crossbar before landing in the back of the net for a 3-2 lead.
From there, it was incumbent upon the Islanders to do what they had on Tuesday and close things out.
This would get stressful after Columbus pulled Greaves with under four minutes to go, but Sorokin came up with the saves he needed to make before Kyle Palmieri’s empty-net goal sealed the deal with 38 seconds left.
It was two points.
Don’t ask how.
Pierre Engvall opened the scoring in a seesawing first period when he tipped in Ryan Pulock’s shot from the left point to finish a power play at the 7:53 mark.
The Islanders would give that goal right back two minutes later when Dmitri Voronkov got on the end of Kirill Marchenko’s rebound for a power-play goal of his own.
Marchenko would center himself in the moment’s worst night for Sorokin before the period ended, banking the puck off the goaltender’s head from behind the net to re-tie the match at two after Bo Horvat had finished off Mathew Barzal’s breakaway feed.
Shortly after that, Tarasov keeled over in pain after defenseman David Jiricek’s hip appeared to catch his head, with Greaves coming on in relief in nets.
That was all in just the first 20 minutes.
A strange night to bookend a strange season.
One that, at least for the moment, might just be veering toward positivity.