“Hard to play against” in hockey tends to be code for “a team that hits hard.”

The Islanders this season were purportedly hard to play against. The Devils were not.

The Islanders lost in the first round of the playoffs. The Devils are in the second round, though they could be eliminated in Game 5 against Carolina.

It is probably time to reevaluate this phrasing.

The alarming thing about the Islanders, though, is not that they are physical. It is that the roster they’ve built prioritizes physicality at the expense of speed — a necessary attribute to win four out of seven games, four times in a row, against the league’s best teams.

Watching the second round of the playoffs after watching the Islanders in the regular season and the first round is like renting a car with an eighth gear after driving around something that stops in seventh.

There is virtue to the physical, defensive style the Islanders play. It does not inherently preclude them from winning.

But they did not have the speed, the extra gear, that makes it just a little bit easier to find offense in the moments when you need it.

Including the postseason, the Islanders won 44 times and lost 44 times. It took them until Game 82 to clinch a playoff berth. There is a noticeable gap between them and the top teams in the league.

Numerically, that comes in the form of offense. The reason behind that lack of offense is a lack of speed.

The Islanders struggled all season to generate scoring off of controlled entries, preferring to get the puck deep and forecheck. This was a product of their strength as a team — winning battles, being hard below the hashes, wearing the opposition down.

That is all well and good, but the extreme to which the Islanders took it was problematic because it meant that to score just once required a heavy workload.

Maybe that wore down the opposition, but it also meant the Isles worked harder than nearly any other team in the league to score a goal. And over an 82-game regular season, it is harder to try to win that way every night than it is to face a team that tries to win that way every so often.

It also helps explain why the Islanders were so awful on the power play. Getting the puck deep is not a particularly effective way to play at five-on-four, but the Islanders never found a way to skate into the offensive zone and set themselves up. That left them with a collective shrug of the shoulders on the power play for nearly the entire season.

The Jets, the only other playoff team that was as one-dimensional as the Islanders were, lost in the first round and are reckoning with serious changes to the team’s core.

The Hurricanes had a similar statistical profile to the Islanders over the course of the regular season and play a defense-oriented game, but they do it with speed up and down their lineup. They dispatched of the Islanders in six games in the first round, and are one win away from the conference finals.

It was no coincidence that the Islanders’ best line in the playoffs — Pierre Engvall, Brock Nelson and Kyle Palmieri — was the line that could best match Carolina’s speed. It was no coincidence, either, that Engvall and Hudson Fasching, two players who raised the Islanders’ quickness quotient, made positive impacts during the regular season.

The inconvenient truth for the Islanders is there is probably no way to completely mitigate this issue over one offseason. There is too much money locked up in too many players who are not going to get faster overnight.

The more optimistic outlook is they can take steps in the right direction with the right moves this summer. Oliver Wahlstrom’s return from a major knee injury should help, and having Mathew Barzal and Bo Horvat together for a full season is a major boost.

But this is not going to fix itself.

Whether the quiet from the Islanders’ organization since breakup day reflects continued deliberation on the future of Lou Lamoriello or not, some clarity is owed sooner rather than later.

The fan base, which has been asked to pay higher prices for tickets, merchandise and parking at a new arena over the past two seasons, deserves to know what is happening with the coach and general manager.

This is not a lineup decision, where the logic behind being obtuse is easy to follow, even if you disagree with it.

It is about the very direction of the team, something that might well affect whether you lay down money for season tickets in the future.

Friday will mark two weeks since the season ended, a short enough time that it would make sense if decisions have yet to be made, but long enough that it is becoming problematic that no one has spoken for the organization since Game 6 against the Hurricanes.

As you already knew, the Islanders will not have a first-round pick for the fourth straight season.

The Red Wings own the 18th overall pick that went from Long Island to Vancouver before settling on Woodward Avenue.

The Isles are not scheduled to pick until 50th overall, a slot at which they’ve selected three times in the past.

In 2011, the 50th pick yielded them Johan Sundstrom; in 1977, they took Hector Marini; and in 1976, Garth MacGuigan.

Marini, who played 45 games with the Islanders, was the most successful pick of the three.