CanucksArmy has no direct affiliation to the Vancouver Canucks, Canucks Sports & Entertainment, NHL, or NHLPA

Trade Trees: How the Canucks-Islanders Bo Horvat trade turned into Filip Hronek, Ty Mueller, and more

Photo credit: © Bob Frid-Imagn Images

By Jeff Paterson

Jul 21, 2026, 13:30 EDTUpdated: Jul 21, 2026, 13:37 EDT

Comments

There was a time, not that long ago, when the Vancouver Canucks appeared to have some of the best centre ice depth in the National Hockey League. With Elias Pettersson emerging as a star, JT Miller coming into his own as a high-level producer and Bo Horvat delivering a well-rounded, consistent effort on a nightly basis, the Canucks were the envy of many teams around the league. That was then. Now, as the team tries to rebuild its strength down the middle, it presents an opportunity to examine the Bo Horvat trade tree.

Needing a new contract as he played through the 2022-23 season, the former captain was dealt to the New York Islanders on January 30, 2023. The Canucks were adamant that a first-round draft pick was part of any return for Horvat. In the New York Islanders, the Canucks found a trade partner willing to meet their demands.

The full deal was Horvat to the Isles in exchange for a first round pick in that year’s draft along with veteran winger Anthony Beauvillier and promising centre Aatu Räty.

One month later, the Canucks took the first round selection they received in the trade and packaged it with a second rounder and moved that package to Detroit for defenceman Filip Hronek and a fourth round pick .

As we unpack the transactions and look at their trade trees three years later, we see that Horvat has played 260 games for the Islanders, scoring 99 goals and adding 99 assists. His two playoff appearances in blue and orange (2023 & 2024) match the pair of post-seasons he logged while in Canucks colours (2015 & 2020).

As for the other pieces of the trade tree, Beauvillier played 55 games over parts of two seasons in Vancouver, scoring 11 goals and recording 28 points before he was dealt to Chicago for a fifth-round pick that the Canucks used two days later as part of a package to acquire Nikita Zadorov from Calgary.

Aatu Räty, for his part, is preparing for his fourth season in Vancouver. He has logged 102 NHL games with the Canucks since the trade, scoring 11 times and producing 26 points over that span. He has also won 59.7% of his faceoffs as a Canuck.

The part of the Horvat deal that brought Hronek to Vancouver has seen the veteran defenceman flourish on the West Coast. The 28-year-old is coming off a career-best season in which he scored eight goals and registered 49 points while averaging 25:00 of ice time per game.

To acquire Hronek, the Canucks moved a first-rounder to Detroit, which the Red Wings used to select defenceman Axel Sandin-Pellikka, who is now 21 and logged 68 games in his first taste of NHL action last season. The Wings used the second-round selection they received from the Canucks as an asset and sent it to Nashville in a swap of picks on the draft floor. The Predators used the pick on forward Felix Nilsson, who has yet to play an NHL game.

The final piece of the Horvat trade tree – for now – is the fourth-round selection the Canucks got from Detroit. The organization turned that pick into Ty Mueller in the 2023 Draft. The 23-year-old has played eight games for the big league Canucks and was a key member of Abbotsford’s Calder Cup-winning team in the spring of 2025. Mueller played a well-rounded game for Manny Malhotra, contributing in a number of areas. In some ways, fittingly, Mueller’s game resembled the way a young Bo Horvat played during his nine seasons and more than 600 games in Canuck colours.