Leevi Merilainen and Jake Sanderson of the Ottawa Senatoirs defend the...

Leevi Merilainen and Jake Sanderson of the Ottawa Senatoirs defend the net against Anders Lee of the New York Islanders at UBS Arena on Tuesday. Credit: Jim McIsaac

Anders Lee was not particularly interested in discussing silver linings.

Not after opportunities to expand on all of the good they had accomplished in the three games away from UBS Arena last week were squandered over the course of two hours and 33 minutes Tuesday night.

And the culprit was a distressing inability to score goals.

“I don’t think we were special enough on the offensive end to create enough to force one in,” Lee said, a few minutes after the Islanders’ 2-0 loss to the Senators.

    The shutout loss was the sixth of the season for the Islanders, which coupled with Boston's and Columbus' wins, has them eight points behind the Bruins for the first wild-card spot and seven behind the Blue Jackets for the second slot.

    Only the Sabres (39)  have earned fewer points than the Islanders (41), who have 39 games remaining.

    Coming off a 3-0-0 road trip and beginning a seasonlong stretch of seven games in a row at home, the Islanders (17-19-7) believed they were in prime position to gain ground in the Eastern Conference playoff race.

    But their best-laid plans were self-sabotaged by an attack that generated 61 shot attempts and 23 shots on goal against Leevi Merilainen, who made his seventh start of the season and the ninth of his NHL career. Of the 23 shots, just five were qualified as high-danger by analytic website NaturalStatTrick.com. And of the five, only two were generated in the final 40 minutes — one in each period.

    “We just didn’t create enough shots and high-danger opportunities,” Lee said.

    Nor was it particularly helpful to their cause that the power play was 0-for-1 against the Senators and is in an 0-for-25 drought dating to Dec. 10.

    “We want to score a power-play goal like everybody else,” Lee said. “It’s a thorn in our side right now.”

    Moreover, the man-up units have scored 11 times in 105 opportunities, which equates to an NHL-worst 10.5% conversion rate.

    “We need to trust what we’re doing,” coach Patrick Roy said, when asked what options the coaching staff has to improve the power play. “We got to trust the guys that are out there. We got some talent. I think sometimes it’s simplifying things and throwing pucks at the net.

    “That’s what I’ve been showing [the players]. Throw pucks at the net. Jam and score on the rebound. Score on the tip. Sometimes that’s all you need to get some confidence and then all of a sudden things start to open up for us.”

    The Islanders did not have a shot on goal during their only power play of the game, which occurred midway through the second period after Nikolas Matinpalo was assessed a two-minute minor for slashing Casey Cizikas.

    “Our power play was not very good,” Roy said. “We want pucks at the net and the guys know that.”

    Still, the overarching question is whether the Islanders have enough time remaining in their season to reconfigure the power play into a productive unit..

    “Obviously we know it has to be better,” Noah Dobson said. “We have to find that consistency.”

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