The Islanders have been in limbo almost as long as Chubby Checker. They were in bankruptcy even while winning Stanley Cups, have been owned by fools and crooks, dressed in raincoats, and played like pawns for real estate investment. Quebec City fans starving for a team once flooded the Nassau Coliseum like vultures circling carrion.

Survivors, yeah, that’s what the Islanders have been. Essentially voted off the island in a failed referendum of Nassau County taxpayers for a new arena, they are now in their third season of playing in an arena whose management doesn’t want them and where they don’t really want to be either. Hey, they have been kicked out of better places than the Barclays Center. In some of the seats there, one cannot see the entire ice, come to think of it, not a bad thing if Dan Plante still was playing.

Since the Islanders lost enough to gain the rights to draft John Tavares, he has been worth watching, even if plastic piping makes the ice even chippier than Bryan McCabe. But home sweet home, this is not. The most abused fans in sports have had decades of tailgate privileges revoked by a move to a concrete jungle. In the corners, where in any other rinks fans are gleefully pounding the glass during fights, celebrating goals, and looking like the world just ended while visiting teams celebrate overtime wins right in front of them is a mounted SUV, presumably already packed with Tavares’ possessions, ready to be driven off.

Tavares has been anything but a bust, but so far the supporting cast rounded up by GM Garth Snow has produced one series win in eight years. And on July 1 Tavares will be a free agent with the privilege of getting the lights on the way out. The latest plan to save the team for New York is an arena by Belmont Park. Could the Islanders, in good conscience, show up there without their horse?

The incertitude goes on and on. But then suddenly, here is Mathew Barzal, confident enough to wear the unluckiest number, showing hands as soft as a rabbit’s foot, turning the Atlantic Terminal into a bed of four-leaf clovers. A flowing robe is on the kid’s back and rose petals are at his feet. Holy Mike Bossy! The Islanders got him with the 16th pick.

They are going to have the rookie of the year? Get outta town! Oops, sorry. Should never use that expression around a hard-core Islander fan. Men of a certain age may still be sustained by the memory of four straight Cups from 1980-83, but two generations of fans now have suffered too many false prophets. Alexei Yashin, you may not come home, all is not yet forgiven. Yet after GM Garth Snow used high first round picks on Ryan O’Meara, Ryan Strome, Michael Dal Colle and Griffin Reinhart, this one can really play.

Barzal, who has a point-a-game in his first 23 contests, suddenly makes the lineup almost as long as the train ride from Garden City on game day. The kid can skate, shoot, pass, and has such great vision that he could have seen through John Spano before anyone else did. So now you no longer need to have a deposit down on season tickets in Seattle to live to see this franchise awake some echoes of Boss and Trots and Potsy. Before Barzal set up Jordan Eberle’s overtime winner in Ottawa the other night, he did more spinning around the zone than Mike Milbury did to the media after another puzzling move. And ultimately Barzal produced a far better result.

“The space [Barzal] makes for himself and the four guys out there with him is something definitely [rare] in this league,” said Coach Doug Weight. “He’s got great edges, great awareness of the body position of his defenders and doesn’t just know where his teammates are but has the ability to put them in the right places.

“I was taught early by Brian Leetch: It is not always about being able to pass the puck over a stick, it is about putting people in positions to receive the puck with extra time to get away a shot. Barzy has that knack.”

You can’t knock a knack like that. It has arrived on the West Coast of Long Island in almost perfect time. The Islanders came into this season a year removed from their only playoff success–just one round–since 1994 and looking like a team on the lower end of the bubble. Now whatever fans they have left are breaking out the bubbly. They don’t have to win another Cup to feel like celebrating the direction, finally.

Snow made a very good trade of the disappointing Strome for Eberle, who is teaming with Barzal and Andrew Ladd for a second line that is playing like a first line. Meanwhile. Josh Bailey, a ninth-overall pick whose best output in eight NHL seasons has been last year’s 56 points, is well over one point a game playing with Tavares and Anders Lee. That’s how adding one talented player multiplies into more.

The defense lacks a true No 1 but so did the Penguins last year without Kris Letang and they won it all regardless. Nick Leddy is playing the best hockey of his career and Calvin De Haan and Adam Pelech–the latter another No. 1 pick (2013)– are a good second pair. So amidst the misses, Snow’s scouts have found some hits in the draft.

There still is legitimate concern about a goal that contains Thomas Greiss and the well-travelled Jaroslav Halak. And then there will be the question of having to pay Tavares $12 million next season and Barzal $8-9 million eventually, leaving how much cap room left to keep Bailey, who will be a hot commodity in a tepid 2018 free agent market for forwards.

Tavares has said all the right things about wanting to stay. Not to doubt his sincerity, but all upcoming free agents say that; there is no percentage in alienating anyone by dropping any hints otherwise. There are a lot of hands in this Belmont Park project, including the state of New York’s, which mitigates against a deal that satisfies all parties being struck by July 1, so Tavares probably will be faced with making a leap of faith. That’s what Charles Wang did. And after all those millions in operating losses down the Nassau County sewer, how did that work out for him?

That said, of 31 teams that would love to have Tavares, most would have a hard time clearing cap space for him, so his options are not limitless. And now Barzal becomes perhaps the best reason to stick around. Instead of Islander fans deciding to drink the poison when the season-ticket bill arrives, opposition coaches would have to choose between the strychnine and hemlock on every shift against the Isles for the next ten years.

“We said all along that we think the world of John and hope to re-sign him,” said Snow. “We feel that would be a great one-two punch for any team.

And if Tavares does leave? The Isles still will have a guy to build around and one who will not likely be overwhelmed by being The Guy.

“I’ve been given some good opportunities by the coaching staff and the players have made me comfortable; that goes a long way to build confidence,” Barzal said. “Right now, I’m kind of running with that,”

The franchise has been on the run since Roy Boe bought it in 1970. A talent like this can help sink roots again, makes the Brooklyn yuppies who have replaced the families of four who attended in Uniondale, want to root.

“He’s one of those kids who wants to get better at everything,” said assistant coach Scott Gomez. “You have to order him off the ice after practice.

“You love seeing that. If he keeps going, he is going to be one of the special ones. Every team we have seen has made an adjustment and then he has made an adjustment.”

Flexibility becomes an Islander. Instability of a franchise probably is an overrated concern for any athletes. Few players have contracts of over four years and the vast majority will go where the draft, trades and the money tells them to go. Only a beloved few sink roots into a community after retirement. Thus uncertainly affects the turnstile count more than the locker room. If it does, that is where leadership comes in.

Asked how a team that could be sleeping under a cardboard box on the street by 2018-19 manages to be 14-7-2 through all the uncertainty, Snow says, “We’re used to it. There was the Lighthouse project, than the referendum; they really don’t listen to the outside noise. I give them a lot of credit.”

Through a lot of hit-and-miss drafting, the GM deserves some credit too for knowing what he wanted out of the deep 2015 draft. Snow went to it without a first-or-second rounder, but he had a taker–the Oilers¬-for Reinhart, and once the Bruins used three straight first-round picks on players other than Barzal, Snow picked up picks Nos. 16 and 33 in the deal and then used the latter for center Anthony Beauvillier, now playing regularly in Brooklyn, too.

Pretty good haul and for the long haul too,

“Mathew is everything you look for in the new game,” said Snow. “A terrific skater; has a passing mentality.”

Snow thinks the Islander have too many guys with a passing mentality; thus the trade for Eberle. But there are lots of guys with passing mentalities who don’t pass it as well as Barzal does. And now he is stating to shoot, too.

“You look at him as a playmaking type of player; he has that shorter stick, but he also has a really great release,” said Weight. “The velocity isn’t the most you will see but I think he recognizes he is playing with smart hockey player who will distribute. He is getting into shooting areas and more often letting go.”

Maybe the fans can finally let go of Zdeno Chara, J.P. Dumont and the overall No. 1 pick that turned into Rick DiPietro–for Mark Parrish and Oleg Kvasha–when Milbury had already drafted Roberto Luongo. When the Calder votes are counted, finally a referendum on the future of the Islanders will go their way.

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