There was no Bo Horvat on Tuesday night, but worse than that, the Islanders looked like a team searching for an identity with little success.
It wasn’t quite the defensive-zone mess that Saturday’s blown three-goal lead to Carolina became.
But it was its own brand of disorganized and aimless hockey, with the Islanders seemingly relying on physicality and guile to win.
That ended up being enough to keep the Islanders in the game for a while, and they looked a lot better on Tuesday than they did Saturday.
But it was not enough to prevent a third loss in four games, 4-2, to the Wild, with the record falling to 5-3-3 — the NHL-specific zone of being above .500 despite having more losses than wins — in front of a restless UBS Arena crowd.
The game reached the third period tied at two after the second spilled into a physical and unstructured mess on both sides, with the Islanders struggling to hit the net and the Wild struggling to gain much offensive momentum.
Then things started to fall apart for the home side.
Consecutive Islander penalties early in the third came back to bite them as Kirill Kaprizov’s one-timer put Minnesota ahead 3-2 after Noah Dobson was sent off for roughing.
Just 41 seconds later, Pierre Engvall was caught over-skating in his own zone and turned it over, leading to a backdoor finish for Joel Eriksson Ek to make it 4-2.
That was symptomatic of a problem evident up and down the lineup as everyone from Engvall to Mat Barzal to Ryan Pulock made a habit of skating around in vain as chances failed to open up.
But on a night where the Islanders couldn’t generate much offensive momentum, a two-goal deficit in the third meant, in practice, game over.
And as if to punctuate the night, Scott Mayfield took the Islanders’ sixth penalty for an illegal hit to the head with under five minutes to go.
The Islanders looked as though they were carrying baggage from the third period against Carolina for the opening 10 minutes of this game and it almost immediately cost them, with Pat Maroon putting Minnesota ahead just 19 seconds in.
It took just a flash from the fourth line — Cal Clutterbuck separating a pair of Wild players from the puck behind the net — to create a scoring chance that Noah Dobson would convert after Casey Cizikas found him at the right circle to tie the game at one.
Oliver Wahlstrom then gave the Islanders a 2-1 lead with his first goal of the season — a power-play snipe from the left circle after he split a pair of defenders at 8:34 of the second.
But Vinni Lettieri got it back just minutes later with a shot from above the slot that made its way past Semyon Varlamov through a screen.
So once again, the Islanders failed to hang onto a lead at home.
The record for the Islanders right now is fine, all things considered, but it is papering over a lot of issues. Namely that this team seems to struggle with a lot of things that have been bedrocks of its identity for so long.
The Islanders talked for two days leading into this game about the need to manage the puck better and fix their breakouts.
Those elements were better on Tuesday, but pretty far from fixed.
The shot count was not quite as bad as the unbelievably lopsided total against Carolina. But it is never good when an opponent getting over 30 shots feels like legitimate progress.
The Islanders have played eight of their first 11 games at home.
They will play nine of the next 12 on the road.
This is only going to get harder, and the easy part has not inspired much confidence.