Much-maligned penalty kill finally finding its footing

Call it infinitesimal progress if preferred, but the Islanders feel like their league-worst penalty kill is starting to show signs of improvement.

“With the couple changes we’ve made, I think we’re getting more comfortable with it,” Cal Clutterbuck said Thursday before the Isles put together just their third perfect night on the PK in their last 13 games. “I think every penalty kill has a structure part of it that you have to get right most of the time. Once you get that structure right, you’re able to make, I guess, what you would call hockey reads from that position in your structure. I guess that’s the thing that comes with any system adjustment, but I think we’re getting good at being in the right places and then making the extra read from there and trying to turn over more pucks.”

The two successful penalty kills the Islanders had against the Red Wings proved massive in an eventual 5-3 win over Detroit on Thursday, which included their first empty-net goal all season in Pierre Engvall’s late tally.

It also pushed the Isles’ penalty kill to 11 of its last 14 — which at 78.57 percent would still be below league average, but is markedly higher than their seasonlong mark of 71.35 percent.

At this point, the bar has been sufficiently lowered to where the Islanders would be happy to hover around the league average mark of 79.2 percent for the rest of the season. That would, in fact, represent a dramatic improvement after being historically bad for much of the campaign.

“[Assistant coaches] Doug [Houda] and [Benoit Desrosiers] worked really hard to get the PK going and I was happy to see the results tonight,” coach Patrick Roy said. “They deserved that because they worked so hard to get this thing and turn it around. We know we need to cut down on chances in the pocket, but I thought the guys made that commitment. I think we can build around that.”

Ilya Sorokin and Ryan Pulock were given Friday’s practice off to rest, with equipment manager Lenny DiCostanzo filling in between the pipes alongside Semyon Varlamov.

Sorokin is expected to make his third straight start Saturday.

Thursday was the Islanders’ first win on Leap Day since 1984 when they beat the original Jets, 4-3, in Winnipeg, per team statistician Eric Hornick.