First, Bo Horvat’s teammates bailed him out.
Then, Horvat bailed himself out.
And so after falling in a two-goal hole thanks to Horvat’s mistakes, the Islanders came back to beat the Blues 4-2 on Horvat’s game-winning goal, tying the season’s longest winning streak at four games and moving within four points of the Flyers and Lightning in the standings.
“Those first two goals were definitely my fault,” Horvat said. “My teammates stepped up big there. … They had our backs. They definitely had mine.”
As the Islanders head west for their longest road trip left this season, their playoff math — which looked dire all of two weeks ago when the Blues crushed them 4-0 in St. Louis — is suddenly not so bad at all.
Since they have two games in hand on Philadelphia and Tampa Bay, they can catch both teams by merely winning those.
The job is far from finished, but these are not fluke victories the Islanders are pulling out of a hat.
Tuesday was one they had to earn — and did.
After allowing the Blues to open a 2-0 lead at the game’s halfway point, the Isles fought back to tie it before the second intermission.
Kyle Palmieri continued his red-hot streak, taking Adam Pelech’s stretch pass and getting to the net with a power move to cut the lead in half at the 12:32 mark of the period.
Just over five minutes later, Jean-Gabriel Pageau banged in a loose puck after Sebastian Aho’s initial shot was blocked by Justin Faulk to make it two-all.
Within a minute of the third period starting, they would lead 3-2 as Horvat — making up for earlier errors — beat Nick Leddy to his own rebound and wrapped it around to score.
“I had some tough nights [as a player] and it didn’t mean we lose the game because of it,” coach Patrick Roy said. “You just need to find a way to get it back and that’s what Bo did. … Character, that’s what I’ve seen from him in that third period. I saw that he wanted [it]. That’s why I put him back on the ice at the end of the game.
“I knew I could trust him. I knew he was playing heavy in the third period.”
And perhaps as notable as the comeback itself is how the Islanders played while holding a lead over the game’s final 19:05.
As opposed to the modus operandi they’ve had for much of the season in those spots — which is to say turning the opponent into Patrick Mahomes — the Islanders defended hard, kept the Blues to the outside and looked for chances to attack.
“There’s no way we’re gonna sit on the lead,” Roy said. “Every team that I played for, we never sat on it. We find ways to continue to play the same way and that’s the first thing I was saying on the bench: ‘Let’s get the next one.’ ”
It all made for a relatively drama-free victory — a state that still feels jarring for a team that has spent most of the season living on the wrong side of the edge.
What suspense there was cut when Mat Barzal scored into an empty net with 30 seconds remaining.
“We didn’t just sit back,” Horvat said. “For us it was a great team effort all the way through. To hold them down to not as many chances in the third period, I felt like we still generated offensive opportunities too and kept the pressure on where, in the past, we maybe sat back a little bit.”
After a pair of Horvat turnovers in the second period let the Blues take a two-goal lead — first with Alexey Toropchenko finishing a two-on-one break and then with Jordan Kyrou taking advantage of a giveaway right by the Islanders net and scoring — it looked like despite the Isles controlling the play, it would be one of those nights.
Earlier in the season, it might well have been.
Instead, Horvat — and the Islanders — fought right back.
“He was on a mission,” Roy said of Horvat.
Mission accomplished.
