A day before being officially named to Canada’s Olympic roster, John Tavares put an exclamation point on why he was a lock. His hat trick highlighted the Islanders’ 7-3 win over the Stars last night at Nassau Coliseum.

It was their fifth win in the last six and moved them up to 37 points. They still trail third Washington by nine with 38 games left. The Hurricanes and Rangers each have 45 while the Devils and Blue Jackets are tied with 42. Fortunately, there’s still plenty of time for the Islanders to climb back in it.

In a game they once trailed 2-0, they outscored Dallas 7-1 the rest of the way. That included rookie Ryan Strome finally scoring his first career NHL goal to get them on the board.

”It’s nice to get it out of the way,” a relieved Strome said. ”Hopefully, I can just start playing now. (It was) starting to bug me a little bit. I had a couple of great chances. It’s a tough league to score. You’ve got to take advantage of the opportunities.”

Trailing 2-1, Thomas Vanek made a behind the back pass to Tavares for a tap in. Fourth liner Peter Regin made it three straight giving the Islanders their first lead two minutes later. Stars’ rookie Valeri Nischushkin evened it on the power play at 15:28 of the second period. Rookie Brock Nelson scored a huge goal at 19:32 from Casey Cizikas and Calvin de Haan to steer the Isles back in front. De Haan picked up his first two points- also setting up defenseman Brian Strait 1:24 into the third making it 5-3.

At that point, Tavares already had a goal and two assists. He got the final two goals on the power play. The first one came when the Stars left too much space for him out of the corner. He walked out and went to the backhand going upstairs on Kari Lehtonen. Frans Nielsen and Andrew MacDonald picked up helpers. He turned the trick when a point shot through a Matt Martin screen hit pay dirt with 3:07 remaining.

“He’s [Tavares] unbelievable. He puts the team on his back. I think the third period you really saw how good he wanted be. He wanted that hat trick and it shows how dominating he can be. If I can learn one thing out of the 100 things he does it’s going to make me successful,” Strome praised of the Islander captain.

”A lot of people dream of those nights,” Islanders coach Jack Capuano said. ”Anytime (Tavares) has a night like that, it’s nice to win the hockey game.”

The game wasn’t without an injury. Starting goalie Evgeni Nabokov left in the first with a groin injury. He stopped seven of eight shots before getting replaced by backup Kevin Poulin. In relief, he turned aside 13 of 15 to get the win.

The Islanders visit Toronto later tonight in the second of a back-to-back.