Bo Horvat was still on vacation at Disneyland, parsing through the news that he had been traded to the Islanders, when the first question came to him about playing with Mat Barzal.

“I have a ton of respect for Mat’s game,” Horvat said that night. “His ability to make plays and pass the puck, he’s got a lot of offensive talent. I think I can complement that with some two-way play. If we do get the opportunity to play together, I’d enjoy that.”

Spoiler: They got the chance to play together.

Outside of the games last season that Barzal missed with a suspected knee injury, they have in fact done nothing but play together.

This was a trade made with the express purpose of pairing Barzal and Horvat, a logic that has never looked better than Thursday night’s 7-3 win over the Blue Jackets.

Horvat and Barzal both finished the game with a pair of goals.

Both assisted each other once.

Barzal added a secondary assist on a power play goal — a set play from a faceoff that Horvat won.

“I would say it’s way better now [than last year],” Barzal said of the chemistry between the two. “I thought before I got hurt, he had just come in, we created a few goals. But I don’t think the actual quality was as good as it is right now.

“It just seems like every time we get a scoring chance, it ends up in the back of the net. That’s the great thing playing with an opportunist like Bo. You give him a chance or two, [he] puts it in the back of the net. That’s what we saw tonight.”

Thursday was not an isolated incident.

Barzal has 11 points in his last four games and 27 in 24 matches this season to match the best pace of his career.

Horvat has points in four straight and is slightly ahead of the pace that led to his career-high 70 points last year.

“I think before Barz’ got hurt last year, we were starting to feel this way and then we didn’t pick it up quite the way we wanted to in that [playoff] series,” said Anders Lee, who has played to Horvat’s left on the top line for the last five games. “I don’t want to look back on it too much, but right now is the most important thing and we’re building out our game. Let’s just keep building on that and keep working and using each other’s strengths.”

In the 30 regular-season games they have played together, that is something Barzal and Horvat have excelled in doing.

At five-on-five, they have played 381:54 together since the trade, not counting the playoffs when Barzal was not quite himself upon return from injury.

In that span, the Islanders have accounted for a 61.29 percent goals share with a 53.88 expected goals share, per Natural Stat Trick.

Barzal’s confidence, he says, is as high as it’s been in years.

Playing with Horvat, who is arguably the most gifted linemate Barzal has ever had, has more than made up for shifting Barzal away from his natural position.

“Our group can play with anybody and outscore anybody,” Barzal said Thursday night.

That’s not how the Islanders would have been characterized by anyone over the last five years.

But for better or worse, it’s been their path to winning this year.

That starts with Horvat and Barzal.

“I thought they clicked very, very well in the third period, there’s no question about it,” coach Lane Lambert said. “Is it as good as I’ve seen them? I don’t know.”

They may only get better from here.