BOSTON — The Rorschach test after Thursday is much the same as it was heading into Thursday.

Outside observers saw a 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 at the trade deadline.

Players and coach Patrick Roy saw a team doing what it needed to do and pulling out two points to prove one can’t write off the Islanders just yet, despite a seven-point gap to the nearest playoff team in the standings.

And general manager Lou Lamoriello, the only one whose opinion matters? Well, he’s fallen on the optimistic side of this question at every time since the Islanders stopped winning playoff series in 2021. But as the rest of the league waits with bated breath to see whether this time is different, the Islanders probably didn’t give the other 31 general managers much help on Thursday night.

“We stood our ground,” Anders Lee told The Post after the Islanders snapped a four-game losing streak in what was, essentially, a makeup game from the hockey gods following two tough losses. “There’s a swagger, there’s a confidence, there’s an energy and a feeling when things are going right. You really gotta sometimes manufacture it a little bit when you’re on a little bit of a skid and you want to end it. Sometimes, you gotta pretend a little bit and fake it till you make it.”

If the facade of a playoff race still is on, it’s Sorokin who 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 near-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 Sorokin’s positioning was a constant issue and he repeatedly was beaten with traffic in front of his net, the goalie was aggressive in his crease, and the Islanders’ defensemen — whatever else their flaws — took pains to get out of his line of sight.

“It’s just one game. We win today, OK, of course I see everything,” Sorokin joked. “It’s just one game. Should [still] work on details and try to use it in my game.”

Sorokin’s excellence, though, was never 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.

Despite repeated scrambles at the Islanders crease and a hectic last couple of minutes at five-on-six, the visitors hung onto the lead and the game.

“When you’re seeing the puck the way he is, you see how quick he is off passes,” Lee said. “And through screens he was seeing everything tonight. He had some tough screens, just catches it in his glove like it’s no big deal and he makes it look easy.”

Despite letting the Bruins dominate the first period, the Islanders took an unlikely 1-0 lead 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.

Those two goals ended up being just enough to get the Islanders over the line.

But more than the minimal impact on the standings, what matters is the impact on March 7 and the trade deadline.

There may not be much — if any — reason to believe in a playoff push, and there may not have been much encouragement in anything the Islanders did Thursday aside from the goalie and the final score.

Lamoriello, however, has proven before he will stand behind this group until the bitter end.

Does two more points help the Islanders further stave off that end?