Islanders’ gritty road win over Stars marred by late injury to Alexander Romanov

DALLAS — If not for what looked like a serious injury to Alexander Romanov in the final minute of Tuesday’s game, you would be calling this the best road trip the Islanders have had in a hot minute.

Their fifth win in six on the road, which snapped a five-game Stars winning streak on Tuesday night by a 3-2 score that came in gritty, grinding fashion, confirmed as much. The Islanders have now won games in all four time zones on this trip, which finally ends in Detroit on Thursday, and not one of them was easy.

Tuesday, a night when it looked — at least for a while — like the Islanders may not have enough moxie in their game to get out of Dallas with two points, may have been the toughest.

There was too much east/west in their game, too few pucks put deep. The Islanders have become a team heavily dependent on skill and speed on the rush — a needed correction from the past few years that, on certain nights, looks like an overcorrection. Tuesday was one of those.

Until it was not.

Give the Islanders all the credit there is for their ability to recognize a problem and work in real time to fix it. They were dominated in the first period and got next to nothing going for the first chunk of the second, depending largely on backup netminder David Rittich to keep them in it.