We wouldn’t advise amateur general managers — Fess up, that’s you and that’s you and that’s you, as well — to try this at home, but when the Islanders lost their best player, John Tavares, to free agency during the summer of 2018, they became a better team the following season, and the Devils who lost their best player, Taylor Hall, as part of a trade in December, have become a better team over the past month.

Now, the Tavares storyline has been picked to the bones since the July 1, 2018 moment the news broke that No. 91 had opted to go home to Toronto. And while it was certainly a shock that the Islanders surmounted his absence to not only finish with a better record than the Maple Leafs, but also to make the playoffs and advance to the second round, we have no idea what the universe might have looked like had Tavares stuck around to play for Barry Trotz behind the bench and in an organization with Lou Lamoriello at the top.

No idea, therefore, what Tavares might have done playing for an Islanders organization with structure and stability rather that one pockmarked by chaos and instability. No idea how far the team could have gone in the playoffs instead of being eliminated in a second-round sweep by the Hurricanes in which the Islanders scored a sum of five goals.

The clock on Hall began to tick the moment the 2017-18 Hart Trophy winner — the first in the history of a franchise that has presented Martin Brodeur, Scott Stevens and Scott Niedermayer for consideration — entered the season as a pending free agent. Hall couldn’t score at one end, the Devils goaltenders couldn’t stop the puck at the other end, and the season turned into a nightmarish facsimile of the first half of 2010-11, when John MacLean was dismissed about halfway into his first season behind the bench.

Which brings us to John Hynes, the coach who was relieved of his assignment on Dec. 3 and replaced on an interim basis by assistant Alain Nasreddine with the Devils 9-13-4 following consecutive humbling losses to the Rangers and Sabres. The change didn’t change much, as the Devils went 0-3-1 in Nasreddine’s first four tries as an NHL head coach.

But by then, GM Ray Shero was deep into accelerated trade negotiations on Hall. The Devils pulled him from the lineup. And they started to win. Indeed, entering Thursday night’s match at the Coliseum against the Islanders, New Jersey had gone 5-3-1 without Hall, who was traded to the Coyotes on Dec. 16 for the proverbial package of picks and prospects that most notably included 20-year-old, 6-foot-7 defenseman Kevin (Wrecking) Bahl, Arizona’s 2018 second-round, 55th-overall selection in the draft.

Now, let us stipulate than any team would be better off with a Taylor Hall than without him, but removing Hall from the equation — incredibly, No. 9 played 211 games in New Jersey after Shero acquired him from Edmonton for Adam Larsson in that stunning one-for-one on June 29, 2016 — created a sense of stability around the Devils with the GM moving quickly to quell what could have been months of speculation leading into the Feb. 24 trade deadline.

And perhaps in conjunction with the Hall trade and the coaching change, or perhaps coincidentally, Devils goaltending became much less uncertain. Nothing can unnerve a team — not even trade speculation — like not knowing whether its goaltender will make routine saves. That was the scenario the first couple of months. That was the scenario when Cory Schneider, since exiled to the AHL, was in nets through an 0-4-1, .852, 4.59 implosion.

But that no longer is the case, with 23-year-old MacKenzie Blackwood entering Thursday’s contest on a 5-2-2, .928, 2.22 roll in nine starts since Dec. 6. Blackwood was New Jersey’s second-round, 42nd overall selection in 2015, and the second goaltender chosen in that draft following the Capitals’ 22nd overall, first-rounder Ilya Samsonov.

Blackwood has benefitted from the structure and stability in front of him. The Islanders, fourth in the NHL overall standings, have benefitted from the structure and stability in the executive suite.

And they have benefited without their best players.