SUNRISE, Fla. — Gravity finally caught up with the Islanders.

For pretty much the entire duration of the seven-game winning streak that got snapped Sunday, the Islanders have been accumulating injuries and winning anyway. It was bordering on the absurd, and that was before Saturday, when the Islanders gritted out a win in overtime after Scott Mayfield and Mathew Barzal both limped up the tunnel.

The Islanders deserve a whole lot of credit for rallying around the flag, fighting through all the injuries and putting together a January that saw them jump from the outer fringe of the playoff race to right in the thick of it. But the reality of their situation hit a whole lot harder after a 6-3 defeat to the Panthers on Sunday in which Carter Verhaeghe’s hat trick made the difference after a second-period rally from the Islanders.

“We felt like we had an opportunity all night,” captain Anders Lee said. “… We kind of did this to ourselves a little bit.”

This was about as much a scheduled loss as any game on the calendar — the second end of a back-to-back with their fourth-string goalie making his NHL debut and with a laundry list of regulars out on the road against the defending Stanley Cup champs. The takeaway here is not so much about the result, though it must be said that every defeat at this point deals the Islanders a blow in the standings.

Jakub Skarek let up five goals on 32 shots in his NHL debut, but the loss came less as a product of the rookie goalie than it did the play in front of him, particularly early in the night.

“I’ve dreamt about this since I was playing hockey,” Skarek said. “Thanks to my mental skills coach, I was just trying to do some breath work [at the start]. Just do the routines I do in every single game. And so it calmed the nerves a little bit down.”

After an atrocious first period that featured two of Verhaeghe’s three goals, the Islanders admirably rallied to score three straight in the second. Two came from fourth-liners Kyle MacLean and Marc Gatcomb with a power-play goal from Jean-Gabriel Pageau in between — that one coming after coach Patrick Roy scrapped his power-play units and ran out the third line.

The brief 3-2 lead fell apart before the second intermission. Evan Rodrigues converted a backhand at the crease and Sam Reinhart snapped in a chance off the rush to put Florida back ahead 4-3.

The Islanders kept on pressing to start the third, but the penalty kill — nearly infallible in January — finally let one up, with Verhaeghe completing his hat trick on a blast from the left circle. An empty-netter from Matthew Tkachuk put a bow on it.

“Too many turnovers,” Roy said of the start, which saw his team go without a shot for the game’s first 10:59. “Look at the first two goals. You can’t turn over pucks against teams like this. It’s one of the best teams in the NHL. … I think if we look at the way we played, it’s a good lesson for us.”

The big picture in which the Islanders are living, at least for the next week before the NHL takes two weeks off for the 4 Nations Face-Off, is what makes this one tough to swallow.

The club didn’t provide updates on Barzal or Mayfield on Sunday, saying they would know more about the status of both in 24 hours. But even if both return in time for Tuesday’s home match against Vegas (which would come as a pretty big surprise), the Islanders need the layoff to start yesterday.

Despite an excellent January, the Islanders still need to make up points to get above the playoff cutline. They cannot tread water, but they’re missing the entire right side of their defense corps, their second- and third-string goalies, their most dynamic offensive player in Barzal and a fourth defenseman for good measure in Mike Reilly.

Not all of those issues can be solved with two weeks of rest, but there might not be a team in the league that needs a breather more than the Islanders, no matter what their recent results have been.

In the immediate, the Islanders can hang their hats on the winning streak that — at least for now — got them back into the race, and take pride in their effort that made a game of it Sunday.

But the big picture as they head back to New York looks a lot grimmer than it should for a team that’s played so well so recently.