BUFFALO — As each minute ticked away last night at the First Niagara Center, the Islanders’ future was looking more and more black and gold.
Yet the frightening Penguins team that dons those colors is not a guaranteed matchup now for the upstart Islanders, who clawed their way back from some sloppy play to gain a point in a 2-1 shootout loss against the Sabres.
The winner came from Thomas Vanke on the first of the skills competition, as Ryan Miller stopped all Islanders’ shooters.
The win/point kept the Islanders from locking up the eighth seed, which would have happened if they lost in regulation. Instead, they can now finish as high as sixth, as long as the Rangers lose today to the Devils, and the Senators lose their final two games.
After a 4-3 shootout loss to the Hurricanes in Carolina on Tuesday, the Islanders’ point clinched their first postseason berth since 2007. Yet they followed it up with a 2-1 stinker in Philadelphia against the eliminated Flyers, and then last night spent most of the evening struggling to produce offense.
They finally tied it when Sabres goalie Ryan Miller made a drastic mistake midway through the third. Islanders defenseman Andrew MacDonald tried to make a long outlet pass, but he missed his intended target and the puck bounced off the backboards. Miller, playing in his 500th career game and possibly his last as a Sabre, came out and whiffed on the touch; the puck bounding to Keith Aucoin, who poured into the empty net.
That tied the game 1-1, and was the one that got the Islanders into overtime for the much-needed point.
The best chance the Islanders had to turn the tides before that came midway through the second period, when they first had a 4-on-3 advantage for 1:06, followed by 54 seconds of 5-on-3 advantage. They got one long-distance shot from Mark Streit during the whole of two minutes, and for the rest of the period any offensive push seemed to disappear.
At that point, they were already down 1-0, as well, after Brian Flynn scored for the Sabres on a good slap shot from the right faceoff dot, beating Evgeni Nabokov inside the far post, 3:29 in. Flynn got the puck from Thomas Vanek after he had beat a group of Islanders for the puck along the sideboards.
The Islanders seemed to repeat their recent first-period performance for the fans here in Buffalo, as they came out rather slow and with little bite. They garnered some momentum when they went on the power play eight minutes in, but the man-advantage group — minus Lubomir Visnovsky, who didn’t dress for a general maintenance and rest day — couldn’t convert.
Nabokov made some solid stops in keeping the period scoreless. On an early 2-on-1, he stoned Kevin Porter, who he denied again minutes later on an open breakaway.
***NHL commissioner Gary Bettman chimed in with his opinion on the possibility of the Islanders moving to Brooklyn’s Barclays Center early, before their lease expires after the 2014-15 season.
“I’d like to see them in the newer building as soon as possible,” Bettman told reporters at the Associated Press Sports Editors commissioners meeting in New yORK. “But I believe the Islanders — not believe, I know — they’re prepared to fulfill their obligations under their burdensome lease. If Nassau County was inclined to let them go earlier, I know they would go.”
bcyrgalis@nypost.com