Islanders skid-snapping win over Wild overshadowed by minuscule playoff hopes

Better late than never.If the Islanders had snapped their losing streak a week ago, there would have been plenty of time to try and make a late charge into the playoffs.Instead, a whole lot of the weight lifted off their shoulders by beating the Wild 3-1 on Friday at UBS is overshadowed by the plain fact of the matter that their playoff chances look shot anyway.Technically speaking, it’s not over just yet.

The Islanders are now five points back of Montreal and even on games played, with the Red Wings, Blue Jackets and Rangers also in front of them.That would be Lloyd Christmas, “So you’re saying there’s a chance” territory.

Enough for some rally-around-the-flag rhetoric after Friday’s win, not quite enough for it to come off as believable.Playoffs or not, the Islanders have little choice but to try and end the season on a good note after the trainwreck of the last two weeks hit a nadir with Anthony Duclair taking a personal leave of absence after coach Patrick Roy decimated his play on Tuesday night.On that note, Friday marked some progress, though by the end of the night, everyone was looking ahead to Sunday, when Alex Ovechkin will roll into Elmont looking to break the NHL’s all-time goals record after tying Wayne Gretzky’s 894 on Friday.With Max Tsyplakov back up on the second line and Matt Martin returning to the lineup for the first time since mid-January, the Islanders’ only option at this point is to try and play as simple a game as possible, get chances off the rush and defend hard.There’s a ceiling with that, it’s not going to work every night, but it looked pretty effective on Friday against a Wild team that is struggling to the finish line while trying to lock up a playoff spot of their own.After Mats Zuccarello put Minnesota ahead 1:42 into the second, the Islanders quickly struck back and controlled much of the game from there.It took Casey Cizikas a mere 36 seconds to answer Zuccarello’s goal, tipping in a point shot from Noah...