Can Islanders, essentially same team, get a better result this season?

The expectation, the aspiration stays the same. It always has for this tight-knit group of Islanders.

“Playoffs, that’s our focus,” Jean-Gabriel Pageau said. “Win the [Stanley] Cup is our goal every year.”

But just as the goal stays the same, so too have the Islanders, who return essentially the same group that was ousted in the first round of the playoffs by the Hurricanes for the second straight season.

The trick is improving with a nearly identical roster. Longtime fourth-liners Matt Martin — attending training camp on a professional tryout offer — and Cal Clutterbuck plus defenseman Robert Bortuzzo are the key subtractions while Anthony Duclair and Maxim Tsyplakov have been imported through free agency to bolster the top two forward lines.

The X factor is just how much of an impact coach Patrick Roy will have being behind the bench from the start of the season. He took over for the fired Lane Lambert on Jan. 20 and guided the Islanders to an 8-0-1 finish to the regular season to make the playoffs.

The Islanders, who have not won a playoff series since back-to-back trips to the NHL semifinals in 2020 and 2021, open the regular season on Thursday night against Utah at UBS Arena.

“It’s a different team for sure,” Pageau said. “I think there’s a new identity that we’re establishing right now in camp, which is the work ethic, the details. You’re going to need to outwork us to beat us. That’s our mentality.”

“I think we feel really good about our team, the group that we have,” defenseman Noah Dobson said. “I think everyone is a lot more comfortable with the way we want to play and the changes that Patrick has made. He’s more comfortable with us.”

Roy deliberately designed a tough training camp to push his players’ conditioning. Drills were sometimes atypically run after endurance skating — repeated goal-line to goal-line treks the players dubbed “whammies.”

But Roy is not looking at the big picture or defining what he believes the expectations should be.

“They came to work and they had a very good camp,” Roy said. “I know it’s been a tough camp. It’s in order to set the tone to have a good start. We don’t want to [look] to June. We want to [look at] what we’re going to do on Oct. 10 and on and on and on.

“We want to be a good, 200-foot team. A team that, every night, will compete. Every night we’re going to be tough to play against.”

That was the identity this core had — when they were younger — in the first seasons under former coach Barry Trotz.

President/general manager Lou Lamoriello, starting his seventh season running the club, continues to show steadfast trust in the core. But he chose not to re-sign either Clutterbuck or Martin as unrestricted free agents, breaking up their long-running Identity Line with Casey Cizikas.

Duclair signed a four-year, $14 million deal to join his ninth NHL team in 11 seasons and will start the season on Bo Horvat’s top line with Mathew Barzal. Tsyplakov, brought in from the KHL on a one-year, $950,000 contract, showed quick acclimation to the North American game in training camp and is poised to start the season on Brock Nelson’s second line with Kyle Palmieri after finishing fourth last season in the Russian league with 31 goals.

Both Tsyplakov and Duclair are expected to be used on the power play, which ranked 19th last season. The penalty kill, now being run by new assistant coach Tommy Albelin, ranked last in the NHL.

“It’s going to be a huge part,” Dobson said. “Especially last year our penalty kill struggled big time. That needs to be better. And the power play, we were good at times but, at times, not good.”

So things must change, even if the Islanders essentially haven’t.

By Andrew Gross

andrew.gross@newsday.comAGrossNewsday

Andrew Gross joined Newsday in 2018 to cover the Islanders. He began reporting on the NHL in 2003 and has previously covered the Rangers and Devils. Other assignments have included the Jets, St. John’s and MLB.