NHL

LEGENDARY CHAMPS WATCH ISLES GET ‘SHOT’ OUT

Maybe the Islanders would be better off not getting 50-plus shots in a game.

For the second time in less than a week, the Isles peppered opponents’ goalies with shots and came away with a loss, and after this latest lost weekend, the team finds itself in dire straits yet again.

Yesterday, Florida’s Craig Anderson – no Patrick Roy – stopped all 53 shots the Islanders fired at him, making David Booth’s first period goal stand up in a 1-0 win at Nassau Coliseum. They lost 4-2 to Pittsburgh on Tuesday despite 52 shots.

And while that was by far a team record for the most shots taken in a shutout, breaking the old mark of 42 set in 2002 against Montreal, Mike Comrie pointed to the overall picture as the real problem.

“The most frustrating thing is that we let four points slip away this weekend,” Comrie said on a day when the Isles honored 17 members of the four Stanley Cup championship teams, making the lack of scoring punch on this team even more apparent. “This weekend we lacked a little bit of grit and character.”

That came at a terrible time, since they were four huge points.

The Isles, losers of four of five, could have tied Philadelphia for eighth on Saturday. And after their loss to the Panthers and the Flyers’ shootout loss to the Rangers yesterday, the Islanders now stand five points back of Philly heading into their next two matches, both against the Rangers.

When asked if he sensed the team played with the requisite amount of desperation yesterday, since it did have a season-high number of shots – one short of the team record and set a team record with 29 shots in the second, Comrie replied, “No. It seems like we’ve seen similar situations when we get a lot of shots, but we make goalies look better than they are.”

Comrie managed to hit a post and Ruslan Fedotenko had a close call, but it wasn’t enough, even though Wade Dubielewicz – subbing for Rick DiPietro, who was attending his grandmother’s wake – stopped all but one of Florida’s 30 shots.

The Isles have just 15 games left and the window on making another late-season push to the postseason is closing.

“We can all do the math,” Comrie said. “When you let games slip away and you’re fighting and clawing for points, it hurts. We know what’s at stake.”

Ted Nolan, even in defeat, said he liked what he saw.

“We threw everything at the kid,” Nolan said of Anderson. “I felt we played well enough to win. Do we have a pure goal-scorer? Probably not, but we should have had a better result.”

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Bruno Gervais left the game with a thigh contusion and concussion after he was hit by Branislav Mezei. He did not return and will be reevaluated today.

Panthers 1 Islanders 0

dan.martin@nypost.com