BOSTON — The Rorschach test that is Islanders hockey offered on Thursday night the same sort of picture it’s been giving ahead of the trade deadline.
Nearly every objective observer would look at this 2-1 win over the Bruins, in which the Islanders were badly outshot and outplayed for much of the evening — with Ilya Sorokin’s 37 saves bailing out the rest of the team — as more evidence the Isles ought to sell.
Not one of those opinions will have any bearing on the thinking of the lone arbiter of what to do a week from now, general manager Lou Lamoriello.
For him, a win over another team ostensibly competing for a playoff spot to stop a four-game skid might just mean the chase is back on, despite a standings picture that offers little evidence of such a thing being true.
In any case, that’s surely how the Islanders’ dressing room will be thinking.
If the facade of a playoff race is still on, it’s Sorokin whom the Islanders have to thank.
Two nights after being pulled in a 5-1 loss to the Rangers in what looked like a crisis of confidence, the goalie was stone cold and unbeatable on the road.
With the team in front of him offering a disastrous start to the game — the Isles recorded their second shot on net more than 15 minutes into the first — Sorokin was unflappable, turning aside shot after shot and odd-man rush after odd-man rush.
Unlike Tuesday, when his positioning was a constant issue and Sorokin was repeatedly beaten with traffic in front of his net, he was aggressive in his crease and the Islanders’ defensemen — whatever else their flaws — took pains to get out of his line of sight.
Sorokin’s excellence, though, never was more clear than in the last 10 minutes of the third period after David Pastrnak had cut the lead to 2-1 with a sharp-angle goal off Tony DeAngelo’s stick.
The run of play was all Bruins from there on out as a game that had been largely quiet came alive and Boston got some strong goaltending of its own, with Jeremy Swayman stuffing Hudson Fasching on a two-on-one break.
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Despite repeated scrambles at the Islanders crease and a hectic last couple minutes at five-on-six, the visitors hung onto the lead and the game.
Earlier on, the Isles had taken the unlikeliest of 1-0 leads when Alexander Romanov came out of the penalty box following the second of three successful kills for the Islanders and connected on Jean-Gabriel Pageau’s feed off the rush.
Just 4:21 into the second, Kyle Palmieri doubled it, stuffing in Brock Nelson’s rebound despite Boston continuing to control play.
Call it a makeup game from the hockey gods after the Islanders were miffed Tuesday at losing despite dominating the shot count against the Rangers.
It’s the potential impact on the 3 p.m. March 7 trade deadline, with the entire league seemingly waiting to see if Lamoriello will cede to consensus and sell, that matters here a lot more than the standings.
Aside from Sorokin and the final score, there wasn’t much room for encouragement.
The Islanders were dominated for long stretches, struggled to break the puck out against an aggressive forecheck and were outplayed on the walls.
That it took them the entire first period to look organized, just two days after a 5-1 loss and one day after the head coach stopped practice to chew them out, doesn’t reflect well either.
On the ice from Long Island
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But the rule for the last four years with this team — one that will have to be broken if the Islanders end up selling — is that whatever scant piece of evidence exists to hang on, the Islanders will happily take.
So however unconvincing it may have been, the more points the Islanders can get, the higher chance that it is another deadline of standing pat.
