Canucks Army Player Profiles: Bo Horvat

Heading into Canucks training camp this season, there was a swell of excitement surrounding several different prospects. Not so in 2014, when all eyes were on one prospect: Bo Horvat. He was big and strong and possessed an “NHL body”, which is important according to every scouting report ever written on the former London Knight. He wasn’t the fastest skater and wasn’t all that offensively gifted, but hey, he could win some faceoffs. Maybe be a bigger, stronger Manny Malhotra some day.

Well, it’s 13 months later and the Bo Horvat craze has exploded. His first season in the NHL defied all expectations. Not only did he come with all the advertised talents, but he was bursting with abilities that he was supposed to lack – namely speed and finish.

Bo Horvat is heading into his second NHL season. How was this gift bestowed upon us Canucks fans, and what can we expect from him this year?

Bo Horvat was born in London, Ontario and raised 50 kilometers away in Rodney, population 1000. After scoring 47 goals and 118 points in 68 games as a midget player, he was drafted 9th overall by the OHL’s London Knights – the same team his father played for many years before. He spent three seasons with the Knights (two before his draft and one after), putting up a total of 165 points in 185 games, as well as making trips to the Memorial Cup in all three season.

The Canucks acquired Bo Horvat with the 9th overall at the 2013 NHL Entry Draft, but that doesn’t mean that the Canucks didn’t give up something substantial in return.

The departure of Cory Schneider was the anti-climax of the goaltending soap opera that finally came to an end when Roberto Luongo was dealt at the 2014 trade deadline. It has its own coloured history which doesn’t need to be told again here. The main thing to know to understand this part of the story? This trade was downright shocking.

In addition to the 9th pick being seen as too small a return for a legitimately elite goaltender like Schneider, Bo Horvat was seen as a player not good enough for a 9th overall pick. Add these factors together, and you had some pretty disgruntled fans.

We heard a lot between Horvat’s draft and his debut that he was forever going to be judged relating to the Cory Schneider trade and that he was unlikely to ever live up to such a comparison.

Well, after the rookie season that Horvat had and how he looked so far in 2015-16, you don’t hear that very often anymore. Now Cory Schneider is still a heck of a goalie – in the top tier of the league in fact. But Bo Horvat seems to have no limits on how high he can go. 18 months after talk that it would take him years to reach his peak as a third line centre, there is already talk of how long it will be before he takes over the top line from Henrik Sedin.

That discussion may be premature at this point – he’s had but one season and scored just 25 points after all. But he’s come a long way in a short period, and that trade with New Jersey that once appeared to be lopsided is starting to look like a win-win. At this point, we aren’t really sure of what Bo Horvat’s ceiling is anymore – that’s up to him.

The sky is the limit for Bo Horvat this season. The Canucks seemed intent on taking things slow with Horvat, preferring him to continue to grow organically in his defensive role before being thrust into too many offensive situations. He was penciled into the third line centre spot to start training camp.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this plan – it ostensibly comes from Linden’s own experience in his sophomore year, in which he struggled under pressure to carry the team offensively.

However, Horvat continued to play the way did in last season’s playoffs (when he tied for the team lead in points), treating this year’s preseason as if it was the postseason. The Canucks appeared to have little choice but to remove the glass ceiling above him. Horvat finished training camp and started the regular season as the second line centre, between playmaker Sven Baertschi and sniper Radim Vrbata.

Horvat’s goal and point output will rely somewhat on his wingers, particularly whether Radim Vrbata, Jannik Hansen or Jake Virtanen is on his right side. In any case, I’d say that Horvat is poised to increase his rookie season production – something that should be very doable with a full season and a higher average TOI.

The “sophomore slump” is always lurking, attempting to temporary derail a young player’s development, but Horvat seems intent on plowing his way through that notion. Who are we to tell him what he’s capable of? The kid’s a beast.