For a pretty long time, the Islanders have fallen back on their culture.

You’ve heard that all before — it’s a veteran team, they’ve won playoff series before, they know what it takes.

So it came as a pretty big surprise Wednesday to see the Islanders getting bag-skated following a physically demanding practice and the head coach devoting most of his press conference afterward to talking about trying to improve his team’s compete level.

Patrick Roy has been around this club for less than a month. And he sure sounded on Wednesday like someone ready to challenge the self-image they’ve had for a long time.

This is still a team trying to make the playoffs, but if Roy is trying to change something as fundamental as culture, it’s difficult to imagine that process ending by the time the playoffs start.

“I was very pleased [with practice] because I don’t like this either,” Roy said. “But unfortunately sometimes you have to do it. I just go with what I learn from the past, the years I had a chance to win, and I just felt like it was a good moment.

“It’s sometimes, I’m not gonna use the word ‘complacent’ because my English vocabulary’s not big enough. But I felt like sometimes we forget these things, if I may say it that way. I think it’s a big part of the game. How you go into these battles, how you compete in every area. I feel like it makes more the difference between winning and losing. There’s things that the numbers cannot show and that’s one of them, the compete level.”

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Now, the four days without games between Tuesday’s loss to Seattle and Sunday’s outdoor game against the Rangers did allow the Islanders the opportunity to hold a practice like this.

And unless something has changed overnight, the goal is still to win now — it would be a total shock to see the Isles sell at the trade deadline. Particularly when the team is a couple of good weeks away from being back in the driver’s seat for a playoff spot. Things can change fast.

All that is important to say. But it is still fairly astonishing to hear the Islanders discussed like that, or hold the sort of practice they held on Wednesday, which had the feel of training camp in February.

Roy is not saying aloud words like “country club” or “effort.” But it was not hard at all to read between the lines during practice, nor was it when I asked whether he was trying to reestablish a culture.

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“I think you understand where we’re going when you say this,” Roy said. “That’s the culture we want to have. We want a team that works hard. That’s probably, in the ’80s when they won those Stanley Cups, I’m sure they had that mindset of working and outworking the other team. Every time they worked.

“That’s what I said to our guys: Every time we put our skates on the ice, we’re gonna work hard. We’re gonna be ready to outcompete whoever we’re gonna play. And that’s the culture, that’s the DNA we’re gonna have as a team.”

The Islanders have taken fairly well to Roy’s system. Tuesday’s loss aside, they have looked like a far more cogent hockey team than under Lane Lambert. They know what they want to be, and that is progress of a sort.

What hasn’t changed yet is the nightly inconsistencies, which have largely consigned the Islanders to being a team that is less than the sum of its parts.

Roy, after a little over three weeks of being in charge, appears to be zeroing in on the reason for that.

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“It’s just a mindset thing,” Scott Mayfield told The Post. “You just have to do it. You always hear it, but it’s a long season. But the way we’re built, the way our team is, we definitely have to bring that every night. I think there have been games, every guy in this room can say they didn’t have it. Everyone’s looking in the mirror. You just gotta find that inner grit, that inner drive, make sure you’re going out there and competing.”

How close are the Islanders to being where they need to be from a cultural standpoint?

“Time will tell,” Roy said. “This is a good group. It’s a group that wants to do well. Sometimes it’s faster than others, but I never put a timeline on this. It’s what you do every day that builds that.

“It’s not just saying, ‘Oh, I want to be there today.’ No. It’s who embraces it and what do you do every day about this. And I think that’s what we’ve been doing. Yeah, our practices are intense and work hard, which I love. And that’s how I love those things to be done. And the guys have been very supportive to that.”

If you count Thursday’s session as a practice, Roy has said the Isles are practicing every day between now and Sunday.

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But it sounds like Roy will be treating it as what it really is: a league-mandated photo-op.

“Distraction,” Roy called it Wednesday. “… Tomorrow, it’s not about the practice. Practice is gonna be 10-15 minutes, but we’re gonna give them time to look at what you have to look at and let’s focus for our game on Sunday.”

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

— A name I should have included in last week’s newsletter on potential trade targets: Jordan Eberle. It’s not likely for salary reasons, with Eberle carrying a $5.5 million cap hit. But as a former Islander and a close friend of Mat Barzal’s — who would probably slot into the first line if reacquired — you have to assume the thought has at least passed through Lou Lamoriello’s head.

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— Since Adam Pelech and Ryan Pulock have returned, they have been the top pair, at least as it relates to how the Islanders have matched up. So far in 79:11 together, Pelech and Pulock have accounted for a 43.99 expected goals percentage and with a 5-9 margin of high-danger chances, per Natural Stat Trick.

— The Islanders made the playoffs last season with 93 points after having 57 points through the year’s first 53 games (26-22-5). This season, they are on the exact same points pace through 53 games (22-18-13), but it looks less likely that 93 points will get them into the tournament. Toronto, Detroit, New Jersey and Philadelphia are ahead of the 10th-place Islanders in the Eastern Conference standings.