After the 2-1 win, Bo Horvat spoke about his missed chance early in the game and his big goal that closed out the first period.
ELMONT, NY -- Early in the first period against the Vegas Golden Knights, New York Islanders forward Bo Horvat flew up the left wall in the neutral zone before getting a strong look on goal.
Horvat elected to shoot with goaltender Ilya Samsonov off his angle by quite a bit. But he missed the net way wide.
"I was pretty mad at myself," Horvat said postgame. "Actually, that first opportunity, the puck kind of rolled on end, and I missed the net by quite a bit."
But Horvat did get a second opportunity, one that he made count. After being sprung up the left wall yet again, courtesy of a perfect in-transition pass from Adam Pelech, he cut to the net before beating Samsonov through the wickets on a nifty backhand move to give the Islanders a 1-0 lead at 18:21 of the first:
"On the secondary opportunity, I realized I had a little bit of a step that I might have had on the first one and made my mind up of what I was going to do right away.
"It's one of those where if it goes in, it looks good, and if it doesn't, it looks pretty bad. Thankfully, it went in."
How about that pass from Adam Pelech to spring him?
"It was great. I mean, he knew he kind of had to thread the needle there. I think it was Stone's stick in the way, and he made a great play to get it to me, to spring me there. So it was a good heads-up played by him."
Sports are a game of adjustments and the elite players are able to adjust rather quickly to find success.
Horvat's vision and understanding of how much time he had in a split second led to a critical goal for the Islanders, who didn't have many goal-scoring opportunities on the night.
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