The regular-season marathon that extends this year to 84 games calls for a whole lot of otherwise forgettable nights when anything less than consistently taking care of business can get teams in trouble come crunch time. 

Thursday at UBS Arena was one of them, and so credit the Islanders for a straightforward and businesslike 4-1 win over the Connor Bedard-less Blackhawks in which Alexander Romanov’s absence was blunted by a clean defensive effort. 

The revamped pairs, with Logan Stanley to Matthew Schaefer’s left, Scott Mayfield inserted into the lineup on Tony DeAngelo’s right and the Adam Pelech-Ryan Pulock duo reunited for the first time since last November, put in a good night of work against a Chicago side that is now 1-4-0 as its long rebuild trudges on. It wasn’t the most entertaining 60 minutes, but in lieu of high-event hockey it was the second win of two for Ilya Sorokin in which the netminder could credit his defense without it feeling forced. 

“I liked how we defended,” coach Pete DeBoer said. “Maysy came in, gave us some solid minutes. I thought it was Tony DeAngelo’s best game he played [so far] this year. I thought it was Pulock’s best game so far. I thought Stan was excellent. Schaefer and Pelly are consistently excellent every night.” 

At this early stage of the year, the Islanders look like a team whose ability to prevent goals or not will be its defining factor on most nights. There have been stretches of every game so far when the breakouts aren’t going and two or more forward lines have looked disconnected. When the Islanders can make those minutes just as frustrating for the opposition as for themselves, they’re in good shape. 

That’s what they did to the Blackhawks for much of Thursday. 

“With this team, obviously a younger team but very hungry, young legs,” Anthony Duclair said, “gotta make sure we take away time and space, especially in the neutral zone. We clogged up the neutral zone pretty good.” 

Bo Horvat put the Islanders on the board with a power-play goal in the last minute of the first, but it was Pelech, turning over Oliver Moore at the defensive blue line, who started the game’s decisive sequence. 

Emil Heineman, the trailer on the Islanders’ ensuing rush, buried one past Arvid Soderblom to double the lead. Another quick breakout sequence in the form of Schaefer’s chip off the wall to Duclair led to their third less than three minutes later after Stanley’s no-look pass found Duclair below the right circle. 

Just 22 seconds before the night’s halfway mark, that made it 3-0, and while the Blackhawks might have stopped the rest of it from becoming academic — 3-0 with 30 minutes to go hardly spells game over — that was not within the visitor’s remit. By the time Frank Nazar’s blast broke Sorokin’s shutout at six-on-five, there was just 2:32 to go, rendering it too little and too late. 

The closest thing to a snag came from Nazar a minute later on a play that ended in Bo Horvat’s empty-net goal, as the winger drove his shoulder into Horvat’s head as the puck was released, prompting a scrum that ended in major penalties on both sides. 

Horvat was still being evaluated, most likely for a concussion, after the game, DeBoer said. Heineman went as far as to call the hit “a cheap shot.” 

“You don’t like that hit,” DeBoer said. “Especially at that time of the game and who it’s on.” 

Still, this wasn’t much harder than it needed to be, and you would have to stretch back to before the current building was open to find an Islanders team that didn’t trend towards the opposite. 

“I told the group after, we’re getting a little bit better every night out,” DeBoer said. “That’s the goal.”