Bo Horvat has impressive company on the list of fastest Islander double-dips. Can Thursday night's tour-de-force set a standard for 3rd-period play going forward?
For those who were too frightened to watch the third period Thursday night, you now can relax.
The New York Islanders pulled it out, and with panache, as Bo Horvat became the seventh player in club history to score twice in 20 seconds or less.
Fans of a certain generation might have recognized his first goal - at 11:31 of the 3rd - as "the move that works ten times out of ten in NHL-95," a/k/a, a backhand wraparound from an angle that doesn't seem plausible in real life.
MSG Network was barely back from replay before Horvat was at it again, tipping a Samuel Bolduc breakout feed past Columbus defender Jake Bean down the right wing to Mat Barzal, who continued the Sega blueprint by swooping around the net and finding Bo in front for a 7-3 lead at 11:51.
It was the quickest pair of goals by an Islander in over 20 years, and to date, perhaps - nay, probably - Bo's most memorable feat since coming to Long Island last January. Here's hoping many more great moments lie ahead, so by the time he's done in Elmont, Thursday night is hardly a footnote.
But for now, it's still worth crooning over. That's because if you look up the ten speediest double-dips in Islander history, these are the names you'll find:
For those curious, Bossy's fastest twosome was 33 seconds in 1981. Mick Vukota famously scored two goals in 28 seconds in 1989. Does that cheapen the entire stat? Or, in this one specific way, was Mick Vukota a greater goal scorer than Mike Bossy? Just saying.
Either way, the title of greatest two-step in Islander history still belongs to neither Bo nor Mick but to Tom Fitzgerald and his storied penalty-kill-polka in Game Four of the 1993 Patrick Division Finals.
On that night, the Isles went from tied 1-1 to up 3-1 when Fitzgerald converted a pair of shorthanded slappers 42 seconds apart.
Well, in reality, it was closer to 20 minutes apart if you take the second intermission into account. By then, referee Don Koharski no doubt learned he had mistakenly sent an innocent man - Claude Loiselle - to the penalty box for high sticking. The true perp was none other than Tom Fitzgerald.
Oops.
Fast forward 30 years, and what we had coming into Thursday's joust with the Jackets was an Islander team in a desperate search for that sort of '93 Isles-esque good fortune, or at least some 3rd-period "mojo.
"As of Tuesday's stunning defeat, the Isles had held a multi-goal lead in the 2nd period or later in 13 games this season and squandered it 8 times.
For fans, that's a familiar habit, but one they thought their team had kicked long ago. During the 2009-10 season, for example, the Isles had 30 late-game multi-goal leads -excluding empty netters - and failed to hold on to 16 of them.
By contrast, last year, the Islanders were in that same position 29 times, and the opposition caught up only thrice!
In fact, on most occasions, it was the Isles forging ferocious comebacks, not the other way around. But this year, so far, has been different.
So judging by their post-game sound, Tuesday's infamous "Shark Attack" left the Isles more than a bit annoyed. Coach Lane Lambert looked visibly disgusted. Captain Anders Lee was fighting mad. And who could blame them?
It was all smiles following Thursday's win, in which they kept the foot on the gas and added to the lead instead of watching it dwindle away.
Can this week be a turning point for the 2023-24 Islanders when it comes to finishing games? So far, so good.