{"id":424270,"date":"2026-01-23T21:11:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T21:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/424270\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T21:11:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T21:11:14","slug":"bo-horvats-anticipated-islanders-return-comes-as-another-injury-pops-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/424270\/","title":{"rendered":"Bo Horvat’s anticipated Islanders return comes as another injury pops up"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Islanders are planning for Bo Horvat to be back<\/a> in the lineup\u00a0on Saturday against Buffalo, but have a new injury doubt after Ryan Pulock didn\u2019t practice Friday.<\/p>\n

Pulock has an upper-body injury and is considered day-to-day, per reports.<\/p>\n

The team has not officially ruled him out for Saturday, but his lack of practice availability is not a good sign.<\/p>\n

\"BoBo Horvat before a December 2025 game. NHLI via Getty Images<\/p>\n

There was no roster move to add another defenseman Friday.<\/p>\n

The Islanders would need to create a roster spot to do that, likely by either sending down defenseman Cole McWard or adding Pulock to injured reserve, which would require him to miss seven days.<\/p>\n

Isaiah George would be an obvious candidate for a call-up.<\/p>\n

As for Horvat, it is a major relief for the Islanders to get their leading scorer back, having gone 5-3-1 in his absence.<\/p>\n

Horvat was originally supposed to join the Islanders on the seven-game road trip that ended Wednesday night with\u00a0a loss to the Kraken<\/a>, but ended up staying on Long Island to skate on his own throughout.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt really good to be back with the guys, back with a regular routine, practice,\u201d Horvat told reporters after centering Jonathan Drouin and Emil Heineman at practice. \u201cIt\u2019s a long road trip they were on. It was lonely back here skating by yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"HockeyRyan Pulock during a Jan. 13, 2026 game. NHLI via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Coach Patrick Roy told reporters that Horvat won\u2019t be 100 percent certain to play until after warmups on Saturday. Barring something very much unforeseen, though, he should be in against Buffalo.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh my god, it\u2019s nice to have him back,\u201d Roy said. \u201cThe guys did a really great job while he wasn\u2019t playing. Listen, he\u2019s our top goalscorer. He\u2019s playing PK and power play, wins big faceoffs. It\u2019s nice to have him back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Horvat said that throughout his recovery, Islanders GM Mathieu Darche was communicating with Team Canada GM Doug Armstrong regarding his availability for the Olympics.<\/p>\n

Horvat, the Islanders\u2019 lone Olympic representative, should get eight games before leaving for Italy \u2014 plenty of time to work back into shape.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we knew it wasn\u2019t too serious, that I\u2019ll be good to go and ready to get back for the Olympics,\u201d Horvat said. \u201cI\u2019m pretty confident in that, too. I\u2019m excited to be back right now. Not only for our team, but gearing up to go to Milan and getting some games in, it\u2019s gonna be huge.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Islanders are planning for Bo Horvat to be back in the lineup\u00a0on Saturday against Buffalo, but have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5110],"tags":[3669,5,122,3328,159,5190,5189,4,5549,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-424270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-islanders","8":"tag-bo-horvat","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-islanders","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-islanders","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkislanders","15":"tag-nhl","16":"tag-ryan-pulock","17":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115946474789802987","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}