Pierre Engvall comes up small as his Islanders fate hangs in the balance

A glimmer of a smirk crossed Patrick Roy’s face after he was asked about Pierre Engvall’s performance Thursday night.

He sat silent for five seconds then asked a question of his own.

“Do I have to answer that?” he said.

In fairness, everyone in the room knew that some 12 hours after the head coach said he was giving Engvall — a healthy scratch in the last two games — “a fair shot” by putting him on the second line with Brock Nelson and Kyle Palmieri, that Engvall had blown it.

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Not only did Engvall fail to get around the net, which Roy has repeatedly said is the thing that can keep him in the lineup, but he failed to establish a physical presence at all, acting as a swinging gate for Yanni Gourde and losing Vince Dunn in the buildup to Dunn’s second-period goal.

A lot of Islanders had bad nights in Thursday’s 5-2 loss to the Kraken.

Engvall, though, is the one most likely to feel some ramifications.

He played just one more shift for the rest of the second period, then spent the third on the fourth line.

It wouldn’t be a surprise to see him be a healthy scratch again — or even on waivers — after Thursday.

“I guess I didn’t see the spark that I was hoping to see,” Roy said. “I’ll leave it [at] this. It was a tough question.”

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Even if Engvall stays on the roster for now, it is hard not to feel like he just whiffed on his best chance to stay on the roster over the long term.

There is a looming cap crunch that’s coming for the Islanders once Anthony Duclair and Mat Barzal get healthy.

Whenever that happens — and Barzal, out with an upper-body injury, has yet to start skating, so it appears he’ll go past the original four- to six-week timeline — the Islanders will need to offload approximately $3.3 million from their books.

That task becomes a lot easier if they send down Engvall, whose cap hit goes from $3 million to $1.85 million if he’s in Bridgeport.

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In other words, there is a clock on the Swede’s time in the NHL if he can’t stick in the lineup.

And he is not going to get a better chance than Roy gave him Thursday.

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The Islanders held a moment of silence for Massapequa High School’s Connor Kasin before Thursday’s game.

Kasin, 17, collapsed during a charity hockey game in Bethpage on Saturday and subsequently died.

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Adam Pelech (jaw) rejoined the Islanders for Thursday morning’s skate in a noncontact jersey, the first time he’s been on the ice with the team since getting hurt Nov. 1.