ELMONT, NY — The Islanders would have lost this game 10 out of 10 times last season and, considering the way they had played in their previous two games, probably should have lost while chasing around the Pittsburgh Penguins for the majority of Tuesday night’s marquee Metropolitan Division matchup at UBS Arena.
“This is why we call this a season, isn’t it?” head coach Patrick Roy pondered after his team remarkably overturned a 4-3 third-period deficit and defeated the Penguins 5-4 in overtime thanks to Bo Horvat’s breakaway winner.
“There’s gonna be nights where you feel like you play a great game and you win, and there’s nights you play a great game, and you don’t,” he continued. “Then there are nights where you don’t play your best and you manage to win. [Tuesday night], I thought that.”
At this juncture of the season, the Islanders — and most teams in the NHL, for that matter — will take two points however they can get them. Tuesday night was New York’s fifth game in seven days, the final stretch of a significantly packed schedule put together by the league ahead of the three-week break for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina.
“Yeah, this is a lot,” Horvat, who will represent Team Canada at the Winter Games, said. “Everybody’s fighting to get as many points as we can and get rested up to go into the break and then come back even stronger than we were going into it.”
Tired legs barely kept up with the Penguins throughout the majority of regulation. Over the final two periods, Pittsburgh doubled up the Islanders on shots 24-12 and had nine high-danger chances compared to New York’s two, per Natural Stat Trick.
But entering the third period down 3-2, Mathew Barzal’s one-timer from the blue line was deflected in, and Ryan Pulock’s wrister from the left circle beat the red-hot Stuart Skinner with 4:36 remaining to answer Justin Brazeau’s go-ahead tally for the Penguins less than five minutes earlier.
In overtime, Pittsburgh defenseman Brett Kulak’s whiffed shot rolled to Barzal in front of Ilya Sorokin’s goal. He shuffled a knuckling puck along the ice into the path of a streaking Horvat, who managed to control it on the breakaway and snap a wrister over the glove of Skinner for his second goal of the night and the game-winner.
“The fact that we were resilient is what makes this game a joy,” Roy said. “That’s how we have to feel about it. I’m not trying to find excuses for our guys here, but we’re in a tough part of the schedule. We’re playing eight games in 13 days, and we have one more to go. So it’s seven in 11 right now. It’s a lot of hockey right now, and it’s hard to be consistent every night. But the guys put a lot of pride on the ice and tried to come back and make our fans proud. I think that’s what they did.”
The Islanders, who now trail the Penguins by one point for second pace in the Metropolitan Division, wrap their pre-Olympic portion of the schedule on Thursday night in New Jersey against the Devils.
To get this next game, get these two points here, and then feel good about ourselves going into the breaks, that’s gonna be big,” Horvat said.
