RALEIGH, N.C. — It is not the Dynasty from which the present-day Islanders must take their inspiration from now, but the precursor to those teams.

As the Islanders head to Carolina to play a do-or-die Game 5 against the Hurricanes — the first of three straight games in which they must now run the table to get past the first round — the historical parallel of choice would be 1975, or did you forget the first Islanders team to make the playoffs, which won eight straight elimination games before finally falling to the Flyers in Game 7 of the conference finals?

Facing a 3-0 deficit to the Penguins in the second round following J.P. Parise’s series-winning goal against the Rangers, coach Al Arbour opened practice not by reaming his team out but by apologizing and taking the blame for what had happened.

“He was apologizing because he just felt that he hadn’t prepared us properly,” Denis Potvin told The Post by phone on Monday, “and I think the humbleness of the man who’s a tough coach and won four Stanley Cups when he played and all that stuff was amazing. And I think it really changed our attitude.”

What happened next would be one of the great turnarounds in the history of the sport, with the Islanders storming back to win the next four games — a feat no one in any major sport would repeat for another 39 seasons, when the 2004 Red Sox came back on the Yankees.

For good measure, the Islanders would go on to push the Flyers to a seventh game after going down 3-0 in that series as well, though they could not finish the job.

“That fourth game [against Pittsburgh], all of a sudden, little things started happening,” Potvin said. “That gave us a little more confidence. And we won that [Game 4], in hockey dressing rooms all over the world you say, ‘We got ’em where we want ’em,’ that kind of stuff. It was really about confidence.”

The current Islanders don’t need a history-making comeback — their deficit is just 3-1 — but the same kind of confidence (especially on the power play) would do a world of good.

Win Game 5 in Raleigh and the tone of the series can change completely.

“The Hurricanes, they do not want to go back to New York,” Chico Resch, who replaced Billy Smith in goal in Game 4 against the Penguins and won each game of the reverse-sweep, told The Post. “Because you see them, I don’t think they’re that much better than the Islanders, with their injuries [to forwards Teuvo Teravainen, Andrei Svechnikov and Max Pacioretty].”

At five-on-five, the Islanders have arguably outplayed Carolina, scoring the majority of goals (8-6) with the advanced stats showing a 52.32 expected goals percentage and a 46-36 high-danger chance edge for the Isles.

Poorly as the Islanders played in a 5-2 loss on Sunday afternoon, that is the reason to think they can turn things around.

But of course it is not so simple as staying the course and hoping things fix themselves.

“In a situation like this and given what I’ve just told you about Al Arbour, Lane Lambert’s gotta be pulling his hair out just wondering, ‘What am I going to say? Is there something I can say in practice, before the next game, is there a lineup change I can make?’ ” Potvin said. “He’s probably not going to sleep over that.”

Lambert on Monday dismissed questions about lineup changes, saying he wouldn’t tell reporters if he was considering any to begin with.

Remember, though, these Islanders played the last two months of the regular season with their backs against a wall just to get into the playoffs.

This is only a higher-stakes version of the same.

“You look at the last game [against Carolina] and boom, [they] get a power-play goal, first five minutes of the game, those things you cannot do,” Potvin said. “And then they got a power-play goal beginning in the second period and it’s 2-0. All of a sudden, the blood’s draining from your body. There’s a lot of words I could use, but the key is always the same thing.

“Bring your confidence and just keep that puck ahead. Keep it ahead. You don’t want to make a back pass, you don’t want to flip it off the boards in your own zone, you gotta shoot the puck, get it out, things of that nature.

“That hasn’t changed all that much. We had to do that in our day when things got panicky. Just be assertive and be physical.”

That is advice these Islanders will be happy to take.