Isles' struggling power play a weighty concern

Doug Weight has been out for 10 days with back spasms, and his return is still up in the air.

In the meantime, Jack Capuano decided to pick the Islanders captain's brain about the team's dismal power play. So Weight donned a coach's warmups and skates and did some on-ice instruction with the power-play units that are mired in an 0-for-29 slump over the last eight games.

"I'll take all the help I can get," Capuano said after the Islanders practiced at Nassau Coliseum Tuesday with a home-and-home against the Rangers beginning there Thursday night. "[Weight] has 1,200 games of experience."

The Islanders won't get Weight back for Thursday's game, but they will likely get Andrew MacDonald (broken hand) back on defense, which will be a boost not only to the power play but to the overall group.

Even without anyone returning, the players on the power play are frustrated. The man-advantage is where the Islanders have been best this season. Even with the 0-for-29 skid, the Islanders are still 16th in the league at 16.2 percent (16-for-99), a product of how well the power play - and the team - started the year.

"We had a swagger about our whole team during that 4-1-2 start," said James Wisniewski, who has 11 of his 14 points on the power play. "We'd work hard, draw penalties and then make you pay. We were confident. I think we've lost a little of that with the losing streak."

The Islanders did snap their 14-game winless streak on Friday, so the confidence may be creeping back, slowly. It may help too that the last time they faced the Rangers, the Islanders scored the tying and go-ahead goals on the power play in a 58-second span late in the third in a 6-4 win in the second game of the season.

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"We've got something to get back to. We know we can do this because we've done it this season," Wisniewski said. "We've just become a little complacent, a little stagnant. This is a special-teams league and we need the PP going."