Ryan Pulock bounced from skate to skate. Music blared. There were still 30 minutes until the opening puck drop Tuesday night, but he looked antsy and ready to go.
Who could blame him?
Pulock had missed the Islanders’ previous 25 games, a stretch over which their season transitioned from a slow start to a COVID-19 nightmare to a Sisyphean climb. It took just one shift Tuesday for Pulock to realize the gravity of that change, when Andy Greene lost a puck battle along the boards and Nick Holden put the Senators on the board just two minutes into the game.
But when the final horn sounded, the Islanders had left UBS Arena with a second piece of good news to go with the announcement earlier in the day that Pulock was being activated off long-term injured reserve. The Islanders had beaten the Senators 4-1, overcoming the slow start to ultimately win in convincing fashion and get back to .500 (16-16-6).
“It was a little different, seeing the lineup that we thought we’d have to start the year,” head coach Barry Trotz said, putting air quotes around ‘lineup.’ “So it’s been a process for us.”
He chuckled at the understatement, perhaps happy with the rare unequivocally good night for the Islanders.
Anthony Beauvillier scored the first of four straight Islanders goals at 18:07 of the first period, cleaning up a loose puck in the crease for a power-play goal. Oliver Wahlstrom put the Islanders ahead, 2-1, at 8:42 of the second period, backhanding Zdeno Chara’s rebound in, and the team was rolling.
The Islanders fell on their back feet early and committed a few bad turnovers, on which goaltender Ilya Sorokin bailed them out. He stonewalled Alex Formenton on a breakaway early in the second and later stopped Tyler Ennis from the slot. The Islanders outshot Ottawa 30-27 and Sorokin, after a couple of uncharacteristically bad starts, finished with 29 saves.
“He’s been doing that all season for us,” Scott Mayfield said. “He makes the saves he has to and then he makes the extra special ones, too.”
Mathew Barzal made it 3-1 with a rocket of a one-timer off Scott Mayfield’s cross-ice pass at 15:50 of the second period. Mayfield made another good feed down the ice to find a streaking Adam Pelech at 7:44 of the third period to put the Islanders up 4-1 and put to bed any doubt about the result.
But the game, really, was about the return of Pulock. Trotz said Pulock’s minutes would be limited, and he played 14:57, with three shots and two blocks.
That in itself was a win worth celebrating for a team that had missed the man who gave their postseason run its signature moment last season, who signed an eight-year extension last offseason and who had played 263 consecutive games before missing the past 25 with a lower-body injury that kept him out four weeks longer than originally diagnosed.
At this point, the playoffs are a distant hope for the Islanders. But if a run is to happen, it will require the kind of good health and good luck their season hasn’t featured so far. It will also require Pulock to fill the role of a puck-moving defenseman that the Islanders, aside from Noah Dobson, have sorely lacked.
“I thought he jumped in and looked real solid tonight,” Barzal said. “He let a couple shots go. … He was just heavy in the corners. He looked like he didn’t miss a beat.”
Too often this season, the Islanders have tried and failed to get the puck through the neutral zone. That, as much as anything, is responsible for their offensive production dropping and the record falling. After beating the Senators, the Islanders are 14-3-2 when they score at least three goals. Pulock can help them get there more often.
“He’s such a big piece of our team,” Matt Martin said before the game. “Been a dynamic defenseman for us for the last number of years. If he’s back in the lineup tonight, it’s gonna give us a big boost.”
He was indeed back, on the ice when the horn sounded, looking down briefly then skating over to share fist bumps with his teammates. In that scene, finally, the Islanders felt complete.