The Islanders have won just eight games in regulation.
The Islanders struggled through the entire month of November.
The Islanders’ special teams have been notoriously awful, and so have their third periods.
The Islanders, somehow, are right in the mix for a playoff spot.
Maybe that says more about the state of the Eastern Conference than anything else.
But after just the second time all season that they won back-to-back games on Sunday, in the form of a 4-2 win over the Senators at Canadian Tire Center, the Islanders were below the playoff cutline due only to having played fewer games than the Rangers, though that was contingent on the Flyers-Utah game later in the evening.
Of course, it is too early in the season for dedicated scoreboard watching to commence.
But that the Islanders did not play their way out of the mix during a run in which they won just three of 13 games that ended with Saturday’s win over the Hurricanes — and that they might just now be finding their stride — tells you something.
So too might the fact that the Islanders, who played ugly all night, managed to win this game in the final period, which started at a 2-2 draw.
And that they did so on the back of — yes, really — their power play.
Their game did not pick up immediately in the third period, which played out much the same as the second.
The penalty kill — which had coughed up a goal earlier in the game — did come up with a crucial kill halfway through the period after Oliver Wahlstrom took a tripping penalty in the offensive zone, but there was little offensive momentum to speak of.
It finally came in the form of a power play, as Kyle Palmieri followed a tripping penalty on Josh Norris by sniping one from the left circle for a 3-2 lead at 13:46 of the third.
It took 6:14 more of hanging on in the defensive zone, with a whole lot of help from Ilya Sorokin — who finished with 28 saves while playing for the second straight night — to secure an ugly victory.
Bo Horvat sealed it with an empty-net goal, and the Islanders — who have so often found a way to lose this season — found a way to win.
It’s amazing what a functional power play can do.
With Ottawa dominating the puck early in the game, Adam Gaudette put the Senators up 1-0 at the 5:37 mark after Noah Gregor’s feed found him in the crease.
The Islanders, though, took advantage of a power play to reverse course as Anders Lee cleaned up the garbage on Noah Dobson’s rebound at 12:27 of the first.
Just over two minutes of game time later, it was Kyle MacLean who banged in Dennis Cholowski’s pass to the front of the net.
That put the Islanders ahead, but it lasted just 37 seconds into the second period before Josh Norris got open at the backside of the Islanders net for a power-play goal, finishing Drake Batherson’s feed.
The Islanders, who ended the second period with just two high-danger chances at five-on-five to their name, spent most of the first 40 minutes struggling to transport the puck or establish the forecheck, ceding puck possession and zone time in droves.
Whatever the score, that had to change in the final period.
Indeed it did, and at least for the moment, the Islanders suddenly look as though the worst moments of the season might be in the past.
They (finally) have won consecutive games, the line combinations rolled out by Patrick Roy on Saturday are working, and the disastrous effort in Thursday’s loss to Seattle appears to have woken up a group that sleep walked through the prior month.
They are back to NHL-.500 and — by the grace of the overtime point — in the thick of the playoff race, with a light week at home upcoming.
Just maybe, a corner is being turned.