CHICAGO — The possession stats newly published this season on the NHL’s Edge site are not all that detailed, but they are instructive.

In the case of the Islanders, they help confirm what the eye test tells us: This is a team that struggles to possess the puck.

After Wednesday’s 4-2 loss in Winnipeg, the Islanders are spending just 38.4 percent of their time in the offensive zone, compared to 43.4 percent in the defensive zone, at even strength. Both of those numbers are below the 50th percentile league-wide.

That points to a few things — poor puck management and decision-making in the defensive zone among them — but right now, let’s focus on how the Isles are generating offense, which is tilted heavily toward the rush.

For a team whose identity is supposed to be centered on grinding, the Islanders do not do a lot of holding the puck below the hash marks, sustaining possession time and hemming in the opposition.

Publicly available data on how teams generate offense is slim, but even in a game Tuesday in which players such as Anders Lee were happy with how the team played, the Islanders spent a whole lot more time out of their offensive zone than in it.

Injuries are high on the list of circumstances contributing to that dynamic, to be sure. But those zone-time stats have been consistent pretty much all season.

It’s easier said than done to shift a team’s offensive philosophy. But sustaining more pressure wouldn’t just be about generating more goals — though the way the offense has dried up recently, that would be nice. If anything, it would be more about helping out a defense that hasn’t played up to par all season.

“It’s a lot of the way a lot of the game is played right now, off the rush,” Lee told The Post on Tuesday. “It’s just the way things trend sometimes. It depends on who you’re playing with, what your linemates are doing, how they like to enter the zone.

“Sometimes you tend to find that you have more success on the cycle with certain guys. And the opposite: You play with certain guys like [Mat Barzal], he’s gonna be looking off the rush all the time. Just working with your guys, that’s how it’s gonna work.”

Barzal is one of the Islanders’ biggest weapons off the rush, that’s true. But he’s also one of their biggest weapons, period — and a player whose skating makes him quite good at hanging onto the puck until space opens up.

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So there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t be suited to some adjustments. Or for that matter, that the rest of the roster wouldn’t be.

The way the Isles have managed the puck all season has lent itself to criticism, including from Lane Lambert. Their decision-making in the defensive zone has been a constant problem and was again on Tuesday.

But puck management can’t just be about the way the Islanders handle their own zone. It needs to go two ways.

All of these problems are interconnected. If the Islanders are attacking too much off the rush, then not only will they not have the puck, but they won’t have bodies up the ice in position to forecheck. If the opposing team can get up the ice easily, then it’s the Islanders who more often will be hemmed in and Ilya Sorokin who will be facing a barrage of shots.

At a time when the Islanders need to make life easy for their goalie at all costs, they can’t afford for that to happen.

“I think sometimes there’s opportunities to attack off the rush and other times it’s about managing the puck,” Kyle Palmieri told The Post. “Some teams will give you that play low to high. And ‘D’ try and get it through and we just try and recover them. Maybe could do a little better job with that.”

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The good news for Lambert as it relates to his job security is the Islanders’ failure of effort in Minnesota looked like a one-off the next night in Winnipeg.

Had his team again failed to come out with the necessary energy, it would have significantly ratcheted up the heat around Lambert’s job.

The bad news is the heat will be right back on if the Islanders lose on Friday. The Blackhawks are a bad team, dealing with myriad injuries and will be on a back-to-back after playing Thursday night. There is no excuse for the Islanders to lose that game.

When questions about Lambert’s job status came to the fore in mid-November, the Islanders quieted them by putting together a strong four weeks. But one-and-a-half seasons into being the team’s coach, Lambert’s support from players and management has far outstripped his support from the fan base — which makes for a dangerous situation.

That again will become apparent if the Islanders return home with an 0-4 road trip in hand.

Want to catch a game? The Islanders schedule with links to buy tickets can be found here.

All was quiet on the Zach Parise front as the Islanders came and went from Minnesota this week.

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But the question of where Parise would fit on the roster has an obvious answer if Pierre Engvall does not return soon from an upper-body injury that kept him out of Tuesday’s loss to the Jets.

Without Engvall, the Islanders suddenly have a pretty strong need for a left wing capable of playing in the top six.

Parise, even having missed the first half of the season, would be a better bet than Oliver Wahlstrom, Julien Gauthier or Hudson Fasching to slide into that role.