CALGARY, Alberta — Lane Lambert wants the narrative around the Islanders to change over the next seven to 10 days.
His team took the first step in that direction on Saturday by finally getting a win.
But the question after the 5-4 victory over the Flames — courtesy of Oliver Wahlstrom’s game-winner in the fourth round of a shootout — is whether the seven-game losing streak that preceded it will be enough for Lou Lamoriello to induce a narrative change that involves a new head coach behind the bench.
If this was Lambert’s chance to make a case for himself via his team’s play, though, the Islanders gave him a pretty good showing and as resilient a third period as he could have asked for.
“We’ve been resilient f—king all trip,” Anders Lee told The Post. “Just to stay with it and continue to play good hockey, even when it’s not going our way. So no different tonight.”
Oliver Wahlstrom scores the game-winning shootout goal in the Islanders’ 5-4 win over the Flames. APMackenzie Weegar’s tying goal at 3:11 of the third looked like a moment when the Islanders might have folded.
Instead, Brock Nelson potted Sebastian Aho’s rebound to give them a 4-3 lead just 19 seconds later, as Weegar’s goal was being announced.
So, too, did Yegor Sharangovich’s goal to tie it at four at the 13:43 mark.
But after frantically defending for the back half of the third period, the Islanders — on their sixth try— finally won a game that was tied after 60 minutes, prevailing in the skills competition after a frenetic three-on-three overtime.
The Islanders celebrate after Brock Nelson’s third period goal during their 5-4 shootout win over the Flames. NHLI via Getty Images“A lot of games, so close to winning but we lose,” Ilya Sorokin said following a 35-save effort. “Today again, 3-2, 4-3, 4-4, again I think in my head, ‘Oh God, this again. Not this.’ ”
This time, though, was different. So too was the postgame, in which you could hear whoops from the coach’s locker room and celebratory music from the dressing room before it opened to media.
“It just needed to end,” Lee said of the seven-game slide. “It needed to end.”
The Islanders played their best five-on-five game of the trip, building an attack and generating a forecheck. And, vitally, they played well on both special teams, with Kyle Palmieri scoring on the power play, Mat Barzal doing so at four-on-four and three successful penalty kills.
Mathew Barzal celebrates after scoring a goal in the second period of the Islanders’ win. APMore than that, however, this game was marked by the sort of resilience the Islanders have not shown enough this season.
“This was our fourth [game] in six [nights], certainly we’ve been a little bit all over the place,” Lambert said. “Our guys, you could see there was some form of fatigue, but I thought they gutted it out. There was a lot of heart there. There was a lot of commitment to blocked shots.”
Whether Saturday will be enough to save Lambert isn’t known. It wasn’t when Jay Woodcroft was fired by the Oilers last week following a 4-1 win by Edmonton in Seattle.
Ilya Sorokin makes a save against Jonathan Huberdeau during the second period of the Islanders’ victory. USA TODAY Sports via Reuters ConIf the dressing room has a say, it will be. Lambert and his team have been steadfast in the belief that they’ve played good hockey and gotten bad breaks recently, and the players have backed their coach whenever asked.
It is easy for that to fall on deaf ears when the team is losing. But now there is at least a positive way to spin things.
The Islanders are on a three-game point streak, having lost in overtime and a shootout in Vancouver and Seattle, respectively. They technically went .500 on the trip, despite losing three of the four games. They are at NHL-.500 in the standings, too, despite having won just six times this season, and the losing streak is over.
“Now we got a long flight home coming off a win. Couple days to regroup after being out west,” Lee said. “And we need to be in our building in front of our fans [who] we’ve been missing the last week and a half. It’s always good to win a hockey game.”





