NHL
Bo Horvat had an odd on-ice moment on Tuesday. Bruce Bennett / Getty Images
The bird is fine.
We need to establish that, straight away, before mentioning anything else that went down on Long Island in Tuesday’s game between the New York Islanders and Pittsburgh Penguins. No sense in making anyone wait.
That’s the end result of an odd, hilarious scene that took place during the first period at UBS Arena, when Islanders forward Bo Horvat went to play a puck behind the Pittsburgh net and was joined by a small bird that was fluttering near the ice surface. Rather than plowing into the bird, Horvat slowed down, eventually wound up with the puck back on his stick and continued a sequence that led to a goal by teammate Matthew Schaefer, four seconds before intermission.
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None of that happens if Horvat chose to finish his check on a bird in a vulnerable position. Let that be a lesson to us all.
Naturally, Horvat was mic’d up for the occasion.
Bo Horvat was mic’d up for the Bird Goal in the 1st period.
It’s incredible. pic.twitter.com/TqY0x6PTPw
— New York Islanders (@NYIslanders) February 4, 2026
The Islanders wound up beating Pittsburgh 5-4 in overtime, narrowing the gap between the two Metropolitan Division rivals and gaining — if only temporarily — a new mascot. After the game, the Islanders posted a video on social media in which they showed that the “rally bird” was being released.
See? The bird was fine. In any case, it joins a not-as-short-as-you’d-probably-guess list of peers to have caused trouble at a professional hockey game, including a chicken that was tossed on the ice in Los Angeles in 1988, and a mishap involving a hard-to-handle condor on the ice before a minor-league game. Beyond hockey, Randy Johnson once struck a bird with a pitched ball, and a cat ran on the field during an NFL game.
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Sean Gentille is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the NHL. He previously covered Pittsburgh sports with the The Athletic and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the NHL for Sporting News, and he’s a graduate of the University of Maryland. Follow Sean on Twitter @seangentille
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