from Neil Best of Newsday,

But what really matters over these last 43 games — forty-three! — is team president/general manager/enigmatic-but-historically-brilliant hockey guru Lou Lamoriello assessing what he has and what he needs moving forward.

That includes determining whether the window is closing on a team loaded with key players on the wrong side of 30 or whether with a few well-placed tweaks it can get back to normal in a normal season come 2022-23.

This will be a tricky process as the March 21 trade deadline approaches.

Are the Islanders merely victims of what has been a uniquely messed-up, start-and-stop season, an anomaly that can be shrugged off come October?

Or are they what they looked like against Seattle: Old, slow and lacking scoring punch?...

I expect the Islanders will play well down the stretch because they have talent, experience, character and good coaching but that in the end, they will fall short — a huge disappointment for their fans and themselves.

The question is what they need to be better over the next year or two before a complete generational overhaul is necessary. It does not take Lamoriello or Barry Trotz to figure this out. The rest of us can see it, too.

They need a dynamic scorer or two, especially someone special for Mathew Barzal to pass to after he is through making opposing defenders dizzy by skating circles around them.

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