Islanders looking to overcome slow start, injuries as schedule eases

The Islanders left a list of milestones on the table with their loss on Tuesday night. 

Had they beaten the Kings, it would have been their first three-game winning streak of the season, their first time over NHL .500 since Oct. 25 and their first time with more standings points than the Rangers this late in the season since Dec. 11, 2022. 

A victory also would have completed a four-night turnaround from last in the Metropolitan Division to a playoff spot — a demonstration of how close the Eastern Conference is toward the bottom, but something to celebrate for a club that just went through a hellish November nonetheless. 

The 3-1 loss to the Kings, in which a late attempt at a comeback fell short, meant none of that came to pass.

But a moral-victory late push is rarely a good reason to be optimistic about a loss. 

The far better reason for the Islanders to look ahead and feel good about themselves is the schedule. 

Coach Patrick Roy has alluded numerous times over the last month-and-change to the Islanders playing 17 games in 33 days, and speaking on the team’s awful start Tuesday night, said, “[We] didn’t have our legs. I’m not looking for excuses, but the schedule’s [been] pretty tough.” 

Tuesday, it just so happened, was Day 33 of that stretch. 

The Islanders play just eight times over the 20 days between now and 2025, with one back-to-back and three different stretches with two or more days off between games.

And to start this run, they get a home-and-home with the Blackhawks, who can lay reasonable claim to being the worst team in the league. 

That doesn’t mean the Islanders are looking at a free four points — just ask the Rangers — but it does mean that they’re looking at a very navigable stretch of games in which they have to take advantage. 

Everything this team has done since Nov. 1 has been graded, fairly or not, on a curve due to all the injuries.

The Islanders have tried to tread water in the standings, waiting until Mat Barzal, Anthony Duclair and Adam Pelech get back with the team. 

They have won just 11 out of their first 30 games, the sort of mark that would sink them in any other sport, but the combination of overtime losses (they have a league-leading seven) and the East being thoroughly unconvincing means that they are just a point out of a playoff spot going into Thursday’s match at home.

You can look at that however you like, but the people whose opinions matter most — that is, the Islanders’ own opinion of themselves — is going to fall on the optimistic side of the equation. 

But whether or not that trio of injured players are back by Jan. 1, it’s going to be tough for even the truest of believers to look at this optimistically if the Islanders can’t take some advantage of the lighter schedule, starting with the Thursday-Sunday twin bill against Chicago. 

Remember, it was an overtime loss at the United Center that marked the low point of last season, with Lane Lambert being fired the next day (though the writing had been on the wall for a few days by that point). 

Patrick Roy’s job is not on the line, but another loss there would without a doubt mark another nadir. 

The rest of the East is not going to play at the Islanders’ pace forever.

They cannot depend solely on the goodwill of their opposition to keep them in the race. 

By Sunday night, they can start checking off all the milestones they failed to meet Thursday.

That is the mandate.