“For me, you always think you’re going to be a Canuck for the rest of your life.” — Bo Horvat on Friday
VANCOUVER – When he was traded Monday by the only National Hockey League team he has played for, Bo Horvat was starting a long-planned family holiday at Disney World before reporting for this weekend’s All-Star Game in Florida.
It was a chance, he told Sportsnet on Friday before leaving Vancouver, to unplug from the stress and craziness of a disastrous Canucks season that had the team’s 27-year-old captain swirling at the epicentre of trade rumours since it began.
Horvat and his wife, Holly, were having custom All-Star Game jean jackets made for their small children, Gunnar (2 ½) and Tulsa (9 months), with the Canucks logo on them.
“Keepsakes,” Bo explained.
The last of them, it turns out.
Vancouver traded him to the New York Islanders for winger Anthony Beauvillier, centre-prospect Aatu Raty and a conditional first-round draft pick. When Horvat flies to New York on Sunday night, instead of turning west to practise with the Canucks in New Jersey, he will head east to meet the Islanders on Long Island.
The Canucks checked all the boxes on their trade wish list: a solid, proven NHL player in Beauvillier who is two years younger than Horvat, an A-grade prospect in Raty who has already logged 12 NHL games this season, and a first-rounder.
It is the biggest in-season trade for the organization since holdout Pavel Bure was sent to the Florida Panthers in 1999. That was five general managers ago for the Canucks. This is a massive transaction that will, one way or another, define the Jim Rutherford-Patrik Allvin era.
But it’s also a sad one – an ending no one anticipated last summer before the Canucks’ new management prioritized J.T. Miller’s contract extension over Horvat’s.
It is the West Coast departure of a player who during some of the most challenging seasons in Canucks history not only became a top two-way centre, but conducted himself daily with unswerving loyalty, dignity and thoughtfulness as the team’s captain.
Even until the end – or at least his one-on-one interview with Sportsnet.ca on Friday – Horvat still wanted to stay with the Canucks and maintained faint hope that there might yet be a resolution to a contract standoff exacerbated by his outstanding season.
In 49 games, Horvat scored 31 goals and 54 points and on Friday, when he pulled on his Canuck jersey for the final time at Rogers Arena, he had four assists in a 5-2 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets.
He was asked that day about the two-year extension just granted first-year Canuck Andrei Kuzmenko.
“Of course you’re happy, but you’re hoping it’s going to be you as well,” he said.
Horvat never said it publicly, but he was determined after last summer to prove how good he could be. It’s not that he begrudged anything to his friend and teammate Miller, whose seven-year, $56-million-US extension begins next season, but after eight seasons in Vancouver, he didn’t expect to be the last guy looking for a chair as the music was ending.
Amid constant conjecture about his future and a kerosene-fire of a season, Horvat merely played the best hockey of his life.
“I’m not going to lie; it’s been really tough, especially on my family,” Horvat told us Friday. “My wife’s been a rock through this whole thing, and I think the unknown for her has been really tough — not knowing what’s going to happen, where we’re going to be, how we’re going to get the kids there. Having that in the back of our mind has been really tough. My mom and dad get texts every single day about where we’re going.
“It’s been stressful, but I mean, I’ve just been trying to do my best to block it out and not take what I do at the rink home to add that extra stress.
“I’d like to think I’ve been through a lot mentally in my life. And, you know, it’s not an easy market to play in with everything going on. So I am proud of the way I’ve handled it.”
He handled it well enough that Islanders general manager Lou Lamoriello paid a small ransom for Horvat – presumably with the expectation of signing him beyond this season.
Lamoriello, of course, was the New Jersey GM 10 years ago when he traded the ninth-overall pick to the Canucks – the one Mike Gillis used to select Horvat – to get goalie Cory Schneider from Vancouver. Now, he’s getting Horvat back, a better player and leader than anyone imagined.
