Depleted Islanders need special teams to step up to keep on surviving

The Islanders’ comeback on Tuesday night started with a power-play goal.And it succeeded in no small part because of a penalty kill in overtime. That is not the whole story of the 4-3 overtime win over the Penguins.

But it is a microcosm of how the Islanders must win — how they must survive — during this injury-filled stretch that is testing every bit of their depth. The special teams were far from perfect on Tuesday, with the Penguins scoring on the power play and the Islanders letting their own four-on-three chance in overtime go to waste.But they were timely and it was an area the Islanders did not completely cede — one of the few times this year that has been the case. The power play right now is 28th in the league at 13.64 percent.

The penalty kill is 30th at 66.67 percent.If you want an explanation for why the Islanders so often have lost games despite winning the expected goals and shot count, there it is in black and white. Only now, as Patrick Roy acknowledged, the Islanders are probably going to see more and more nights like Tuesday, where they are spending much of the five-on-five play in their own zone.

That is in no small part a function of being without three of their opening-night defensemen and two-thirds of their top line. “Are we gonna give up more shots? Yes,” Roy said.“We gave up 40 against the Rangers, we gave up 35 again tonight.

It’s gonna happen because these guys now need to get more comfortable at that level and they won’t gap up like, example, [Alexander Romanov] would do or [Adam Pelech] would do.It’s normal.

They need time and they need to get that experience, so we need to consider that as well when we look at them.” That frank assessment of how the Islanders can expect the tide of five-on-five play to go is probably correct, at least until a couple of their defensemen are back.Which makes it all the more paramount that their special teams win those games instead of losing them. This is not a new parad...