By the time their long wait ends on Saturday night, 30 other NHL teams will have played — step forward and claim your prize, Anaheim — and the Islanders’ restlessness will have been replaced with anticipation.
They have spent the last few nights on their couches, watching everyone else start their seasons.
The Islanders would have liked to get going a little sooner, but this is the hand they were dealt, a Saturday night opener against the already 0-1 Sabres at UBS Arena.
“It’s not ideal,” Bo Horvat said. “Sick of practicing and sick of not playing hockey games. You want to get going with it. It’s been a long week, but gives us extra time to prepare and get ready for Saturday.”
The feel inside the Islanders’ dressing room is one of sameness, not so much with the group that began last year, but certainly with the one that ended it.
After fielding a lineup on opening night that included Robin Salo, Kieffer Bellows, Anthony Beauvillier, Nikita Soshnikov and Josh Bailey, the roster underwent changes on the fly, then stood nearly still over the summer.
Based on practice Friday, Simon Holmstrom will be the only player in the lineup against Buffalo who did not feature in Game 6 of the playoffs against the Sabres, replacing the not-quite-retired Zach Parise.
Even the makeup of the lines and pairs are not all that different, though Holmstrom playing on the top line while Anders Lee moves to the third counts as notable.
The roster is very close to the same.
The coaching staff is the same.
The front office is the same.
The goal is the same.
That is regularly cast as a weakness, but the Islanders are a team that knows what they are, what they want to be and where they want to go. In the dressing room, that is seen on just as a strength but as a binding fabric.
“We want to have an identity. I think we know what that is, to make us successful, and we want to play to it,” Ryan Pulock told The Post. “And I think in the past, we’ve been pretty solid defensively and been hard to play against. And I think that’s an area we want to continue and continue to get better at, and really round out our game as a whole.
“I think it’s important to have an identity. And I think we’re working towards that again and I think every year, you kinda have to work towards that and find it. I think it’s important to build on that and every guy know what their job is and I think that helps you create that identity.”
How a team starts is rarely reminiscent of how it will finish.
It was clear last year within a matter of weeks, if not days, that Salo, Bellows and Soshnikov would be stopgaps.
Beauvillier struggled to make a consistent impact and was traded, along with other pieces, for Horvat.
Bailey was a healthy scratch five games into the season, an early sign that it would be his last year on Long Island.
It is not yet clear this time around what roles Oliver Wahlstrom and Julien Gauthier — likely to be scratches on opening night — will play, but it is clear they will have roles.
Ditto for Samuel Bolduc.
The exact makeup of the team will morph.
Maybe Parise will come bounding through the door at some point.
Its mentality and identity, however, is unyielding.
“Everyone’s familiar in here with each other and our system and what you want to do,” Pulock said. “Every year, you have changes with your structure and your system and every year throughout the season, you’re tweaking things. But I think the base is there and we want to build off that.”
All that’s left is to go play for real.
“I think everybody’s looking forward to getting started,” coach Lane Lambert said. “Seeing where we’re at and [we’ve] had enough of practice.”
