Before the Islanders went on the road last week, coach Lane Lambert made clear that he needed to see more out of Samuel Bolduc.
If the team bringing in Mike Reilly off waivers didn’t serve as a wake-up call to the young defenseman, then Lambert’s words certainly should have, as he said Bolduc had started too slowly in a loss to the Flyers and the Islanders needed to see more consistency from him.
The early returns are that Lambert might have found the right button to push after a pair of games where Bolduc played his season-high, then bettered it with 17:56 of mostly steady ice time against the Sharks in Tuesday’s 5-4 overtime loss.
“I feel like as he gets sort of his feet under him and gets a little bit more time and a little bit more consistent playing time, I think that there’s some strides and some steps that are being made for sure,” Lambert said pregame. “More assertive. I thought in Florida, one of his best games — maybe his best game of the year. Just hoping that continues for him.”
The Islanders don’t need Bolduc to be a hero.
But for as long as Adam Pelech and Sebastian Aho are out, they do need him to be reliable enough in his own end that Lambert is not forced to play Noah Dobson and Alexander Romanov for 30 minutes nightly.
The time for paeans about Bolduc’s development is at least on pause until Pelech is off long-term injured reserve and the Islanders can breathe a little easier.
For now, though, they are in a playoff race where every point will matter, just as it did last season.
“I always knew that [consistency’s] something that I wanted to work on for myself, being constant for myself,” Bolduc told The Post. “I still have to work on it a little bit. I’m definitely better than when I started playing pro. I think I’m gonna just keep improving myself.”
Aho (upper body) skated with the team on Tuesday morning for the first time since getting hurt on Black Friday in Ottawa. Lambert did not have a timeline for when Aho will come off injured reserve and rejoin the lineup but described the defenseman as “getting closer for sure.”
Oliver Wahlstrom was a healthy scratch for the first time since Nov. 11, coming out of the lineup to accommodate Julien Gauthier, who stayed on the third line with Simon Holmstrom and Jean-Gabriel Pageau.
“He’s been fairly consistent for the most part, but at the end of the day, we’ve got players,” Lambert said. “There’s internal competition here. There’s guys that came into the lineup, they played well.”
Brock Nelson and Noah Dobson both played after missing Monday’s practice for maintenance.
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