Islanders sacrifice style for needed win but big questions still linger

Some style points would’ve been nice. But the Islanders will happily sacrifice those at the altar of victory.

This looked like that kind of night from the start and indeed it was.

The Islanders led 2-0, then 3-2. They saw Anthony Duclair crumple to the ice with an apparent right leg injury. They let up a tying goal with 2:10 to go in regulation, then hit the post twice in overtime.

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The shootout went into a ninth round.

That was when Noah Dobson got to be Batman to Semyon Varlamov’s Robin.

“One for five now in the career,” Dobson said, his first ever shootout goal having given the Islanders a frenetic 4-3 win over the Canadiens. “Trending in the right direction.”

Does it answer the questions lingering about this team, which hasn’t looked especially consistent in any area aside from goaltending through five games?

Not really. And after Duclair exited the game in the third period, going down and not putting any weight on his right leg as he was helped off, it’s hard to feel great.

But the Islanders needed some breathing room after dropping three of their first four games — albeit two of them coming in overtime — and that’s what they got, in typically dramatic fashion.

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“I think it was one of those nights where, for some reason, they found a way to climb themselves back in, whether it was our doing or them putting pucks on net, whatever it was,” captain Anders Lee said. “But I think for us to stick with it — I think we played through the game. Stuck with our mindset and our structure, our aggressiveness, throughout that third period and took the lead.”

They took it, after Duclair’s injury cast a pall over proceedings, via Lee, who buried Jean-Gabriel Pageau’s rebound off the rush after Pageau brilliantly corralled Adam Pelech’s feed up the left-hand boards, with under five minutes to go.

Then they gave it right back, as Cole Caufield’s right-circle shot trickled through Varlamov.

No matter.

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There was redemption coming for Varlamov, who stopped 21 shots in regulation and overtime, then seven more in the shootout — standing up to defenseman Logan Mailloux to seal it.

“That’s Varly,” coach Patrick Roy said. “And not just Varly — the team. We regrouped after the goal, called a timeout just to make sure that we stayed focused and keep the same energy level, the same focus, and I was proud of the way the guys responded after this. It could be a tough one and affect the play of our team, but didn’t change anything. We kept moving, we kept pressing and we had our chances.”

Through these 65 minutes, the Islanders looked at times discombobulated and at times like the only thing missing in their game was the final shot. It was — like their season so far — wholly inconsistent, but not so much as to let the train fly off the tracks.

How they respond to the potential loss of Duclair, who completes the top line, will be the big-picture story after Saturday.

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Small-picture, though, they showed the kind of resilience necessary to deal with an injury like that.

“I thought we deserved that game,” Pageau said. “We had a lot of chances. We played well, we played hard, we did a lot of good things. … I thought we showed a lot of character to keep pushing toward our goal.”

Duclair aside, there are still uncomfortable questions hanging around.

The Islanders twice let Montreal back into the game, letting up goals at 19:56 of the first and 59 seconds of the second to let an early two-goal lead go to waste before the near-collapse at the end.

After Bo Horvat scored on the power play early, they struggled through five more chances and after Max Tsyplakov was called for the only Islander penalty of the game, they let Caufield score after just five seconds.

There are still moments, far too many of them, where the Islanders look like a team still working through its identity, despite their veteran nature.

But those are problems for another time.

For now, a win is a win is a win.

That’s the motto for the Islanders, and missions A, B and C on Saturday were avoiding a fourth loss in five games.

“For me, it was an exciting game,” Roy said. “I don’t know how it was for you guys [or] the fans. But it was exciting for me.”