An Opening Night wish list for Islanders

So much has been made of what the Islanders didn’t do.

Coming off a first-round ouster in the playoffs, general manager Lou Lamoriello nonetheless seemed pretty content with what he already had, opting to spend the offseason locking down existing talent over upgrading the roster through splashy free-agent signings.

So when the Islanders made their long-awaited season debut Saturday night — a crisp 3-2 win over the Sabres at UBS Arena — there were plenty of familiar faces.

There was Ilya Sorokin in net — no complaint there — but there also was the offense that sputtered so often last season. And though Opening Night generally is imbued with novelty and hope, there was no escaping that the offseason decision to “play it safe” might very well be the biggest gamble of all.

It’s far too early to know if this will pay off, but in the spirit of fresh starts, Saturday night at least provided some tangible, if limited, reasons to give this strategy a (slim) chance.

Sorokin again was the glue, making 26 saves to bolster the Islanders’ typically strong defense. The first line of Mathew Barzal, Bo Horvat and Simon Holmstrom clicked fairly seamlessly, and overall, there was an almost midseason ease to their play.

It turns out, continuity can have its upside, especially when it comes to team chemistry.

“It’s big,” said Casey Cizikas, who scored the tiebreaking goal with 6:20 left. “A lot of us have been together for a long time. We lean on each other a lot and we expect a lot from each other. That’s kind of the way we always go about our business. We’re a tight group and we believe in one another.”

That’s not to say there aren’t big questions to answer; in fact, they’re largely similar to the questions the team faced last season. And when the puck finally dropped Saturday night, fans were reciting the same set of Hail Marys (or Hail Matys, as the case may be): Let this be the year that Barzal’s considerable talent translates to considerable point production.

Let this finally be the season the power-play unit doesn’t suck the momentum straight out of this offense.

Let Sorokin stay healthy and, oh, Noah Dobson, too.

And for all that is good, let Horvat be first-half Canucks Bo Horvat and not second-half Islanders Bo Horvat.

That’s a lot of hopes and prayers, even for an opening night. But that’s the reality of what the Islanders are working with: a Vezina Trophy-caliber goalie, a shutdown defense . . . and an offense that managed an anemic 243 goals last season, 22nd in the league.

Of course, Lamoriello has made his case for this crew. He thinks having Horvat and Pierre Engvall for a full season can be enough of a difference-maker, and there might be some strength to that argument — especially if Horvat, who centered the first line with Barzal on the left wing — shows himself to be the type of finisher who can make good on Barzal’s elite puck-handling. Horvat and Engvall should considerably help a power-play unit that finished 30th in the NHL last season.

And there’s a general sense, too, that the Islanders were dealt a crummy hand last season, including losing Barzal for 23 games.

“You can view it as the same group or you can view it as we had two pretty key players that didn’t get to play a full year and then we had our All-Star being out for the long stretch coming into the playoffs,” defenseman Scott Mayfield told Newsday in the offseason. “I don’t really view it as the exact same team. I like the makeup of the team.”

That means Sorokin will have to continue to be elite — no pressure there, Ilya. It means that the aging-but-iconic fourth line needs to reclaim vintage form in what likely will be its last season together. And it means Barzal needs to have the breakthrough season that’s always seemed just out of his grasp.

That’s a lot of things that have to go right in an 82-game season in which things pretty famously, and pretty regularly, go very, very wrong.

But hey, Saturday night was the first game of the season, and if you can’t have hope then, when can you?

“It’s always nice to start off on the right foot,” said Brock Nelson, who had a goal and an assist. “It’s been a long week for us. I think everyone is excited to get out here . . . We had quite a few good looks . . . I think we did some good things.”

Now they’ve got 81 more games to prove that this group can keep it up — not by retreading an old road, but by refining it.

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.