Isles end road trip vs. Western-worst Sharks

The immediate plan for the Islanders is now simple: Get two more points, then get back East.

This three-game trip to California cannot be perfect after the Islanders dropped the opener to the Kings on Tuesday. But a 2-1-0 mark out West would be perfectly in line with expectations for the Islanders, and avoid a disastrous loss to the bottom-feeding Ducks or Sharks. The Islanders got out of Anaheim unscathed on Wednesday with a 6-3 victory. So now it is down to San Jose on Saturday, against a Sharks team the Islanders beat 5-2 in their first meeting in October.

“It was huge,” Brock Nelson told reporters after the win against the Ducks. “Last couple, not great results. [Tuesday] night wasn’t great. Did a couple OK things and the second period kinda lost it for us. Games like that, it’s kinda nice where you can bounce right back, get right back at it like today. It’s a good job by everybody.”

After going on a tear to win six of eight after Mathew Barzal’s injury, the Islanders dropped two games in a row in regulation for the first time since late January against the Capitals and Kings. In a playoff race that has been walking along a knife’s edge for the better part of three months, those two losses made the difference between the Islanders controlling their own destiny or not, at least for the moment.

Going into Thursday’s set of games, the Islanders had a five-point lead on Florida, but the Panthers had three games in hand. With 12 games left on the Islanders’ regular-season slate, the margin for error is razor-thin, as well as they’ve managed to play for the last month or so.

The Islanders can’t afford to lose to a team like San Jose, which is very much in the race to tank for likely eventual No. 1 pick Connor Bedard with a 19-36-13 record going into play Thursday.

The Islanders took care of business against the Ducks, but have had a tendency to struggle in these spots all year, with two losses to Arizona, two to Nashville, a home loss to St. Louis and an overtime loss in Montreal helping make the difference between being safely in the playoffs and being in the position they currently find themselves.

There’s no use crying over spilled milk at this point.

“I give our guys credit, I thought [against the Kings on Tuesday] we played hard,” coach Lane Lambert told reporters in Anaheim. “We talked about a little threeminute [stretch] or whatever and I thought tonight we played extremely hard as well. I’m real happy with the group and proud of the guys.”