With An OT Win, The Islanders Have One More Shot At Making History

The Islanders as we know them will play at least one more game. But even in victory late Saturday afternoon, Patrick Roy managed to add up this era for the franchise.

“It doesn’t have to be pretty, you know?” Roy said after Mathew Barzal redirected a shot by Robert Bortuzzo 1:24 into the second overtime to lift the Islanders to a 3-2 win over the Hurricanes in Game 4 of an Eastern Conference first-round series.

With the win, the Islanders avoided being swept, forced a Game 5 tonight in North Carolina and redirected the conversation from what will happen to the longest-tenured core in the four professional sports after this season to can the longest-tenured core in the four professional sports do what has only been achieved a handful of times in history?

The odds, of course, are still long. With the Rangers completing a sweep of the Capitals in the NHL, the NBA’s Thunder and Timberwolves dispatching the Pelicans and Suns in four games and the NHL’s Panthers and NBA’s Nuggets finishing off the Lightning and Lakers, respectively, in five games, teams that race out to a three games to none lead in a best-of-seven series are now 296-5 all-time in the aforementioned series.

That gives the Islanders a 0.02 percent chance (or 0.166, if you want to be exact) of completing the comeback. More recent history suggests the Islanders will be hard-pressed to even flirt with the 1942 Maple Leafs, the 1975 Islanders, the 2004 Red Sox, the 2010 Flyers and 2014 Los Angeles Kings, who are the only teams to win a best-of- seven series after falling behind three games to none.

Entering this season, 28 NHL teams had fallen into an 0-3 hole since the Kings’ comeback. None of those series went the distance and only four last six games.

But having a chance certainly beats the alternative, and at the very least, both teams are aware of how dangerous the Islanders can be with their backs embedded a few inches into the ever-cliched wall.

“At this stage of the series and where we’re at, you almost can play maybe a little more free,” Barzal said.

“They’re back in it,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said Saturday. “We gave them some hope here now.”

And hope is a dangerous thing, especially for a team like the Islanders that remains a decided underdog. They aren’t the 2004 Red Sox, who finished just three games behind the Yankees but outscored them by a single run (106-105) while winning the season series 11-8.

The Islanders finished 17 points behind the Hurricanes, who were tied for seventh in the NHL in goals scored while surrendering the fourth-fiwest goals. The Islanders were tied for 22nd and tied for 19th, respectively.

On Saturday, the Islanders were outshot 44-35, including 18-10 in the overtimes. Barzal’s redirect was the Islanders’ only shot in the second extra session.

“That’s how teams score in overtime — greasy goals, you just throw the puck on the net,” Islanders goalie Semyon Varlamov said. “I always say any shot is a good shot.”

And now what if Varlamov, now firmly entrenched over Ilya Sorokin, is the modern version of Chico Resch, who took over in net for the Islanders after they fell behind 3-0 against the Penguins in 1975? And what if Barzal’s redirect is Hurricanes’ equivalent of Tony Clark’s double bouncing into the stands for a two-out ground rule double in the ninth inning in Game 5 in 2004, which forced Ruben Sierra to stop at third instead of surely scoring the go- ahead run in what turned out to be a 5-4, 14-inning win for the Red Sox?

History suggests Varlamov, Barzal and the rest of the Islanders will not join that select club of players and teams who made history. But for at least one more game, they’ve got a shot.

“You see the guys around with a smile in the room — that’s contagious,” said Jean-Gabriel Pageau, who scored the Islanders’ second goal Saturday. “We believed in ourselves all season. We believed that we were a playoff team, that we had a chance. And that’s what we did tonight — we kept believing.”