Islanders flash signs of progress to fix defensive struggles: ‘Pretty solid’

SAINT PAUL, Minn. — Underneath the blow of a shattering last-gasp goal that delivered the Islanders a regulation loss in Nashville on Saturday night came a return to the sort of game the Isles must start playing more often in the second half of the season.

The operative stat in the 3-1 loss to the Predators: three high-danger chances allowed at five-on-five, the fewest of the season for the Islanders, per Natural Stat Trick.

“We were pretty solid,” Noah Dobson told The Post. “Both teams were solid defensively. There wasn’t a lot of great looks. There were definitely positives in it. It was a decent road game for the most part.”

There have been false starts scattered throughout the year for a defense that ranks 30th in the league in high-danger chances allowed and has left Ilya Sorokin to face more shots than any other goaltender in the league.

There are no guarantees that this is not another one.

But it was around this time last season that the Islanders started to get their house in order after playing a more open game through the early part of the year.

If they are going to do the same this year — and get the same benefit of making the playoffs — it has to happen soon.

Whether because of injuries or because this more of what they have been all year long, the Islanders have played mediocre-at-best hockey for a while now.

It was not so long ago that they were starting to think about making a run at the Rangers for first place in the Metropolitan Division.

They entered play on Sunday needing to root against the Red Wings in order to wake up on Monday in a playoff spot, hanging onto the second wild card by a point over Detroit and New Jersey.

Over the season, they are 19-13-10 — which in a sport that did not reward certain kinds of losses would be known as 19-23.

Nobody should begrudge the Islanders for taking advantage of the system at hand.

But likewise, nobody should be pretending that a team losing more than it wins is a great success.

That can be quickly reversed in a playoff race where even the first-place Rangers entered Sunday having lost four straight and with just a seven-point playoff cushion.

But with Monday night’s game against the Wild being the first end of a back-to-back — the second end of which already feels like a write-off given how poorly the Isles have performed in such situations all year and given their goaltending situation — things can spiral just as fast.

Especially with Mathew Barzal and Bo Horvat’s time on ice together currently limited on account of Casey Cizikas’ injury — they played 7:28 together at five-on-five Saturday thanks to Barzal double-shifting — the Isles need to do more than rely on their star power.

A group that once excelled at holding onto leads and eking out 2-1 wins needs to do just that.

The Islanders cannot keep asking Sorokin — who is carrying an immense workload with Semyon Varlamov hurt and may be forced to start both Monday and Tuesday — to bail out bad defense.

The blue line is not yet healthy, but with Adam Pelech and Scott Mayfield back in the fold, the situation is a lot more manageable than it was two weeks ago.

The results on the ice need to start reflecting it.

If you look closely, maybe Saturday represented the start of that.

“I thought our guys were real solid,” Anders Lee told The Post after the loss. “It was a tough night to generate much offensively. They played really good in their own end but we did the same thing in return. It was kinda just a grindy game, not a lot of open ice, not a lot of open plays. Thought we played a real solid game.”