So, yeah, those first four Islanders games …

Look, when you’re thirsty for success, that’s all it takes, right? A small sip of prosperity here. A brief whiff of prominence there. When you’re 21 years without a playoff series victory, going on more than 30 since the most glorified of glory days, you look for tiny tracks of progress. Baby steps. Infant inches.

“Four out of 82, man,” Kevin Connolly says with a laugh over the telephone. “There’s a long way to go, but you’re a fan, right? So you start to let your imagination go …”

Sports is a humbler, though. Sports is a hanging judge. Sports knows exactly when you let that imagination run a little too wild. And so there was a loss at Pittsburgh in Game 5. There was a brutal loss at home to the Maple Leafs in Game 6. Sports hates hubris. Sports loathes overconfidence.

But even in those moments, sports can be something else, right? So even as the Islanders were booed off the ice in that 5-2 loss to Toronto, there was something strangely serene about the way Nassau Coliseum reacted, something almost melodic about the way the Isles were hooted.

Because booing equals caring.

And caring is a damn sight better than ignoring.

“Hey,” says Connolly, the actor and Long Island native best known for “Entourage” and “Friends With Better Lives” and the terrific Islanders documentary “Big Shot,” “anger is a good thing. Anger shows that the fans are engaged again.”

It is early. It is way early. And as Connolly says: “There’s still December, and it seems like every year we go oh-for-December and build a huge hole for ourselves.” But early is good. Early demands optimism. And when early includes a fair share of excellent hockey, early also insists upon hope. And this is a good year to hope if you care about the Islanders, or even if you used to care.

As the guys at the terrific Islanders blog Lighthouse Hockey wrote the other day: “We are only at six games. Nothing is Lebowski’d here, man. But the fun part of the season, when the seedlings are still showing their colors, is that each game adds a relatively tiny but proportionally large blip of data.”

Or, as John Tavares himself said: “After four games, we weren’t winning the Stanley Cup. And after six we’re not winning it. So, it’s a long season.”

Intellectually, you know that. Still, this is bound to be an emotional season for Islanders fans, the clock ticking on the old rat hole on Hempstead Turnpike. It’s not like these are the Dodgers: Brooklyn is a bit closer than L.A., and even the most fervent Islanders fan knows the Coliseum’s date with a wrecker’s ball is long overdue.

“I think we all get nostalgic thinking about the Coliseum,” Connolly says. “But when you really think about it, a player like John Tavares shouldn’t be working in that kind of old rat hole.” He laughs. “He deserves a much newer rat hole.”

Connolly has the kind of Coliseum stories all of us have. Once, after the Islanders won a war with the Rangers, his brother, Tim, finished a game-long debate with a Rangers fan by shouting: “Get out of our house!” and as he did so, the arm of his seat came off in his hand.

“Nice house,” the Rangers fan said.

But even that is part of the story, right? Connolly talks about trying to keep his two nieces clear of the influence of other relatives who would have them root for the Rangers, tells them about how surviving the lean times makes you a stronger fan. Islanders fans nod grimly at that.

But also recall the times that defined this franchise, years that will come tumbling back across the final 38 games at the Coliseum (plus playoffs, you hope). Connolly remembers listening on the radio as a soon-to-be 8-year-old on the night of Feb. 21, 1982, when John Tonelli scored with 47 seconds to go to beat Chico Resch and the Colorado Rockies for what was then an NHL-record 15th straight win.

The Cups? We all have our own memories. Mine, also a radio memory: Two 13-year-old baseball teams loitering at West Hempstead High on May 24, 1980, nobody wanting to abandon the dugouts since Game 6 of the Cup Finals had gone into overtime. We were at bat when Bobby Nystrom scored, so it was our dugout that exploded.

“It’s amazing what we remember as sports fans, right?” Connolly says, laughing.

Or as a fun Islanders Tweeter, @RoseTintedVisor, put it the other day: “I make no sense but I’m fierce about it.”

Fierce is good. Even this early. Fierce carries the day, and allows you to forget the bad that has come before, and enjoy a victory as sweet as Thursday’s 3-2 heart-thumper in Boston. Because all that ever matters is the good that lies ahead. Somewhere.