Islanders defenseman Noah Dobson skating on an upward path

Scott Mayfield is entering his eighth season. Noah Dobson is beginning his fourth.

Mayfield is 29. Dobson is 22.

Mayfield is in the wily veteran category. Dobson seems to be exiting the embryonic stages of his NHL career.

For Mayfield, top-flight NHL defenseman Alex Pietrangelo is the immediate comparable for Dobson.

Not bad company. Not bad at all.

“He does a little bit of everything,” Mayfield said of Dobson after the third day of Islanders training camp at Northwell Health Ice Center on Saturday. “When he gets the puck, he can skate it out. He makes a good first pass. He joins the rush. We saw what he could do leading the power play last year and getting those shots through.”

As the Islanders embark on what they believe will be a bounce-back 2022-23 season, one of the areas they feel positive about is the development of Dobson — the 12th overall pick in the 2018 NHL Draft — from highly touted prospect to lineup fixture.

While 2021-22 was a collective disappointment for the Islanders, individually it was a breakout season for Dobson, who had 13 goals and 38 assists in 80 games. He had a team-high 190 shots on goal and led all skaters in total minutes (1,717) and average minutes (21:28) of ice time per game while primarily paired with the recently retired Zdeno Chara.

According to data culled by the website NaturalStatTrick.com, the two were on the ice together for 770:04 spanning 71 games, leading the Islanders in both categories.

“Noah has continued to improve. Skating, his thought process of the game,” coach Lane Lambert said.

Lambert added that he doesn’t know what Dobson’s ceiling as a player is. “He just continues to grow,” he said.

For a defenseman who had totaled only four goals and 17 assists in the COVID-19-shortened seasons in 2019-20 and 2020-21, last season was a revelation.

“I was happy with the overall year,” Dobson said. “I think I had a bit of a slow start the first 15, 20 games for whatever reason, and then after that, I was really happy with the strides I took. I think I started getting more and more comfortable, started producing the way I should be and being reliable defensively as well. So I think it was a good step.”

He was rewarded with a three-year, $12 million deal in the offseason as well as a new defense partner in Alexander Romanov, who was acquired from Montreal on the first day of the NHL Draft.

In the first three days of training camp, the two have been paired together. So far, so good.

As Dobson pointed out, the minutes the duo play together during the exhibition season will be meaningful.

“Playing with new guys, you need the reps,” he said. “I think you can do as much as you want in practice and simulate stuff but . . . it’s a different story in the game.”