Horvat showing he’s one of those special players
After more than a year as a Vancouver Canuck, winger Tanner Pearson knows his centreman pretty well.
From the first day he arrived in Vancouver — at the 2019 NHL trade deadline from the Pittsburgh Penguins, in exchange for Erik Gudbranson, a face-saving trade that’s proven to be one of general manager Jim Benning’s best — he’s been paired with captain Bo Horvat.
“There’s that stereotype where guys are built for the playoffs,” he said Friday night in Edmonton, after Horvat scored at 5:55 of overtime to give his team a 4-3 win over the St. Louis Blues, giving the Canucks a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series. Game 3 is today at 7:30 p.m.
Horvat, he acknowledged, is one of those special players.
The man his teammates call Cap has been a horse, head coach Travis Green said after Game 1 on Wednesday. He then compared Horvat with a monster in describing his Game 2 efforts against the defending Stanley Cup champions. “Obviously, I’m feeling pretty good about my game, but I think the most important thing is it takes an entire team to win a hockey game,” Horvat said. “I can’t take all the credit.”
Horvat opened scoring in the first period Friday with a shorthanded strike at 7:23, collecting the puck in his own end, rushing up ice, beating a pair of swift forward in Jaden Schwartz and Brayden Schenn to create a breakaway, then beat Blues goalie Jordan Binnington.
In overtime, rookie defenceman Quinn Hughes made a brilliant pass to Horvat, who again raced in on Binnington and fired the puck through the goalie’s legs.
Horvat has four goals in his last two games, putting everyone on notice that his time in the spotlight has arrived.
This is the kind of player who Mike Gillis believed he could be when the former Canucks GM flipped Cory Schneider to the New Jersey Devils at the draft in 2013. Gillis said was a player you could build the next version of the Canucks around.
There weren’t a lot of draft picks Gillis’s scouting crew got right, but Horvat was a gem. The Canucks weren’t alone in their admiration of the young centre from the London Knights. If Vancouver didn’t take him ninth overall, the Dallas Stars, picking 10th, would have.
The internal drive to get better has always been obvious. That Horvat has become an incredible skater is testament to that.
The Canucks also got goals from Pearson and from Elias Pettersson.
But it was Horvat’s performance that stood out and was key to victory. He stood above everyone on the ice at Rogers Place.
“The last three games are as good as I’ve seen during my time here,” head coach Travis Green said of his captain following Game 2.
Horvat, he said, hadn’t been happy with how he’d played in the first two games of the qualifying round against the Minnesota Wild.
He had reviewed a pile of video of his play with assistant coach Manny Malhotra, looking to find things to improve on, Green said.
“The good thing with Bo is you can be honest with him.”