After a whole lot of games over the last couple years when the Islanders could point the finger at special teams for losing, here came one in which they won squarely because of special teams.
Two power-play goals, a shorthanded goal and a five-on-three kill is a pretty good way to do that.
That is what the Islanders got against the Oilers and that is what they rode to a 3-1 bounce-back win at UBS Arena.
Even the third period came with little drama — a twist on a motif this season.
The Islanders spent all of the final 20 minutes defending a 3-1 lead, the operative word being defending.
Even with the Oilers choosing to pull Stuart Skinner with five minutes to go in this game, trying to take advantage of the Islanders’ inability to score into an empty net this season, the Islanders kept on defending — managing the situation until Zach Hyman tripped Noah Dobson with 3:08 to go.
At that point, Edmonton had little choice but keep Skinner in net and let the clock tick down. Even when they didn’t score, this was special teams coming through.
But the moments in which the game tilted toward the Islanders came in a second period that included 7 minutes 25 seconds of special teams.
An Islanders power play that came into the game converting at a 25.3 percent clip would only get better after Sam Gagner was called for tripping at the 2:05 mark as Anders Lee stuffed in Kyle Palmieri’s rebound less than 40 seconds into the power play, tying the game at one.
Less than 10 minutes later, with the Islanders on the power play again, Brock Nelson threaded a pass to Bo Horvat in the slot through traffic, letting No. 14 loose a wrist shot to give the Islanders a 2-1 lead.
The Oilers’ power play, dreaded in its own right, got a turn quickly after Horvat’s goal, but let up a two-on-one break after losing the puck out of the zone, which Simon Holmstrom — who else? — finished from Jean-Gabriel Pageau at the 14:10 mark to make it 3-1.
And then, because things were a little short on drama, Robert Bortuzzo held Connor McDavid on a clear-cut scoring chance before the power play was up, giving the Oilers 58 seconds at five-on-three.
The Islanders, whose penalty kill ranks dead last in the league, only went and killed it off.
Then for good measure, faced with a bench minor for too many men at the 8:24 mark of the third, the Islanders killed that one off, too — averting the sort of ditch into which they have fallen all year.
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To be fair, the third period, as a whole, fell into that category. The Islanders sat back and defended their lead for just about the entire 20 minutes — a strategy that has repeatedly backfired on them all year.
Tuesday, they got the defending and goaltending needed to pull it off, even against McDavid and Leon Draisaitl on the other side.
That is how a team whose penalty kill has been an issue all this year, whose power play was a problem all last year, goes and wins a hockey game with its special teams.
Not that the Islanders were so bad at five-on-five, though for the first 10 minutes it did look like they picked up where they left off after the second period in Montreal on Saturday.
But aside from Draisaitl’s goal after 83 seconds, the Islanders were able to limit the bleeding and steady their game.
That is an important two points for a team that needed to regain its balance ahead of a pivotal pre-holiday trip against two division rivals.
And a team, by the way, that still has not lost consecutive games in regulation since the first time it played Edmonton, all the way back on Nov. 13.
The Islanders could have put together that streak in a more fashionable way, to be sure. But that is a pretty good place to be for a team that is down half of its defense corps.
And Tuesday, they found a pretty good way to get there.