Islanders nip Blue Jackets in overtime to maintain playoff positioning

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Far too many times over the past few years, the Islanders have been in the same position the Blue Jackets were Saturday night: playing a four-point game, long before the end of the season, where it felt like their lives were on the line.

Rarely have they been in the opposite chair, but there they were Saturday. Columbus came into the evening six points behind the Islanders — the playoff team closest to them — and with two games in hand. An Islanders win wasn’t going to eliminate the Blue Jackets, but surely a growing standings deficit the week of the trade deadline would point Columbus general manager Don Waddell in a certain direction.

Now, Waddell has a hard week in front of him. His team tossed away a 2-0 lead in a game it was dominating through 30 minutes, and the Islanders walked out of Nationwide Arena with a 4-3 overtime victory on Simon Holmstrom’s game-winning goal that left the Blue Jackets seven points out of a playoff spot and gasping for air.

It was the second game of two on this road trip in which the Islanders trailed by two goals in the second period, and the second game of two in which their resiliency, along with some timely adjustments from coach Patrick Roy, made that forgettable.

“We just needed to be better with our puck management, that’s all it was,” Roy said. “When our ‘D’ were in [the offensive zone], we have to cover for them, and we didn’t do a good job. And they took advantage of it.

“… I thought we started putting more pressure on our neutral zone instead of sitting back. We had more pressure on our forecheck and we pressed more on the D-Zone coverage. I thought that created the game we had towards the end.”