Islanders fortunate to sneak off with point in overtime loss to Oilers

EDMONTON, Alberta — This isn’t Ottawa anymore.

The Islanders had a pleasant surprise of a three-game stretch heading into this road trip by netting five of six points and generally playing well despite a crushing set of injuries, but that challenge was nothing like the one they faced on Tuesday night in Edmonton.

This was Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl; Evan Bouchard and Mattias Ekholm; an Oilers team that might have started the season slowly but is packed with stars and won the Western Conference last season.

The Islanders were not going to get through these guys as easily as they got through the Penguins and Senators.

That they came out of it with a point, losing 4-3 in overtime on Draisaitl’s game-winner after a late rally, marked a more-than-flattering account of how the night went, which coach Patrick Roy was well aware of when he met the media afterward.

“You know what? There’s nights you’re going home, you’re pissed off,” Roy said. “There’s nights you’re going home and going, ‘OK, we stole a point. Tonight that was the case.”

Ilya Sorokin, who recorded 38 saves behind a desperate defense, kept them in it for much of the night and captain Anders Lee scored twice in the last 10 minutes of regulation to force overtime.

“He made some great saves for us,” Ryan Pulock told The Post. “He’s done it all year. Every game he’s given us a chance and again tonight, he gave us a chance.”

Thanks in no small measure to the goalie, the Islanders came into the final period with a chance to steal this one after Kyle Palmieri tied the game at one off Max Tsyplakov’s feed 15:58 into the second.

Consecutive goals by Bouchard and McDavid appeared to put a bow on it, as the Islanders had been unable to generate any offensive momentum — and indeed ended the night down 15-2 in high-danger chances at five-on-five.

McDavid’s dazzling backhander off a nifty Ryan Nugent-Hopkins feed looked like the backbreaker for the Islanders, but to their credit, they hung around.

Lee put in Pulock’s rebound at the 12:54 mark of the third to make it 3-2 and then struck again after an early pull of the goalie from Roy, putting in Jean-Gabriel Pageau’s feed to send the game to overtime.

The point the Islanders got for that was, really, a point more than they deserved.

“At the end of the day, I think overall we probably need a better road game to get the two points,” Kyle MacLean said. “To battle back in the third, it was good to get that point and at least come outta here with something.”

Come overtime, McDavid fed Draisaitl for the winner, which marked the fourth point of the night for No. 97, and the 999th of his career.

“At the end,” Roy said, “I think we were just gassed. We had a hard time to break out because the guys could not move their feet or anything. I’m extremely proud of our guys.”

The breakout problems were not just limited to the end of the game though.

The Oilers played a heavy game on the forecheck all night and the Islanders in turn struggled to transport the puck up ice.

“They were turning a lot over off their forecheck and getting chances off it,” MacLean said. “So maybe that’s something we need to clean up to clean up our breakouts a little.”

All the injuries they’re currently dealing with aside, aside, this building has been an unhappy place for the Islanders, who have won here just once since the place opened in 2016.

The Oilers, stacked with speed and skill, looked like a team that would present big matchup problems for an Islanders team that just can’t compete in those categories given their injuries and that is indeed what played out.

It’s not the way they wanted to start this five-game trip.

But it also looked on paper like the toughest match of the 12-day trek.

Keeping alive what is now a four-game points streak and showing some resilience isn’t nothing, even if such moral victories tend to feel hollow.

In the main, however, it is a reminder.

The longer the Islanders take to get healthy, the longer they are living in a world where games like this are an uphill battle.

“We pick up points while we’re missing a lot of guys,” Roy said. “So we take them.”