Could the Bo Horvat trade give the Canucks a chance at a fresh start?

The first trade deadline deal has been made with Bo Horvat going to the New York Islanders, and Thomas Drance joined Frank Seravalli and Mike McKenna to talk about it, and where the Vancouver Canucks go from here.

Frank Seravalli: When you take a look at the return that the Vancouver Canucks get, you’ve been hammering the table hard saying that the Canucks need to rebuild. They’re not doing that, they’re retooling. In the return that they got here, did they get enough, and does this align with more of a retool than a rebuild?

Thomas Drance: Yeah, I think what I liked about this trade is that the best assets they’ve got coming back are true future assets. In Aatu Raty, you’ve got a 20-year-old forward prospect. I know there’s some skepticism in the industry, a lot of talent evaluators don’t view him as a lock necessarily to stick at center, but I know the Canucks do. And nonetheless, 20-years-old, not 24, not 25, 20. That’s a high-valued future in my view anyway, especially because he’s only on the first year of his entry-level deal.

Then you go through to the first round pick. It’s a true first round pick. This isn’t getting the Boston Bruins 2023 first. The New York Islanders are not a lock to make the playoffs, and there’s top-12 protection on it, but it could convert to 2024 unprotected. That to me is the highest upside piece that the Canucks got back.

When I think about the overall need that the Canucks had to fill, what I wanted to see from the Bo Horvat trade, number one on the list is that I wanted to see them get an asset that could, not as guaranteed to, but could alter their trajectory of the franchise overall. And that conditional pick, while a longshot play, we’re talking about +500 for it to end up in the top 10 in 2024, but nonetheless, it’s a longshot that could significantly accelerate what this team is looking to do with the future in mind. So, I like the future-forward aspect of this deal.

The Beauvillier part of it confuses me just a little bit, because when I look at this Horvat package, one thing that strikes me about it, and let me know if you agree with this, but it’s pretty conventional. The pick, the player, the prospect, that’s as classic a trade deadline return as you’re going to get for a player like a Bo Horvat. 

And yet, when I consider comparable values, I think about Giroux going for Tippett, a first, and a third; I think about the Duchene package between Ottawa and Columbus that was a first, a conditional first, which you couldn’t do anymore because of the changes in the CBA, but it was conditional on Duchene signing an extension, a high-upside prospect in Vitalii Abramov, a third; and then you think about the J-G Pageau deal, a first, a second, and a third. 

All of those deals didn’t include the team making that trade taking back a significant non-expiring salary, which the Canucks have done in Beauvillier, which sort of changes this up.

I’m curious to know if that’s just the cost of doing business in the flat cap era, do you have to help a team out to get a conventional trade deadline return with the premium placed on cap space these days? 

Or did the team just really like the player, and sort of undervalue the part portion of the return that was their cap savings, both in the short and long term for having moved off Bo Horvat. 

That’s the big question that I have remaining, and I think we’ll get a better answer to it as we get closer to the deadline and see other teams jump into the pool.

Mike McKenna: I had that same thought about Beauvillier, is this one of those second-chance type of players that Jim Rutherford had talked about previously that they’re trying to get some value off of, or is it just that cost of doing business? 

I suspect more of the latter, and that leads to my question. If they’re taking on Beauvillier, if they’ve just given Kuzmenko another deal, how are they going to mine out the cap space that’s been talked about so frequently by the Canucks?

Thomas Drance: Well, I think all eyes have to turn now particularly in the wake of the club committing another $10M the wings in Beauvillier and Kuzmenko over the last five days, all the attention’s got to turn to Brock Boeser and Conor Garland. 

I think it’s no secret that this club’s been disappointed by their performance, I don’t know that either is necessarily a player that fits the template of what Jim Rutherford wants in terms of being either fast or big or score a lot, and neither player has done that.

Those names loom large going into the offseason, and you just hope, at least I hope, that a team with no straight forward path to being even competitive for a playoff spot next season, I hope they don’t consider things like buyouts or retaining significant salary in order to facilitate those deals. 

Consistent with the logic of getting that high-value, high-upside conditional first and Aatu Raty, I hope the team is able to take a longer view and not cut off their nose to spite their face to try and crowbar open a window to make the playoffs again next season with their other moves, especially on the wings, where they are so overweight in terms of their cap investment to that position.

Frank Seravalli: You kind of touched on it in the first answer, but I’m curious, you mentioned the idea of taking on Beauvillier. If you’re talking to some talent evaluators and they respond and say the Canucks got essentially what they believe is two third line players and a first round pick in return for Bo Horvat, at the end of the day, did they get enough? 

You see a report from Kevin Weekes this morning that the Canucks did not shop the deal that they had in place with the New York Islanders, that they liked this package the best. My question is, why now, why so early ahead of the deadline did the Canucks feel the need to pull the trigger?

Thomas Drance: Yeah, and it’s an interesting one, because Canucks fans are pretty excited that the team has just made a classic future-forward deadline trade. 

There’s obviously some regret in losing Bo Horvat, some second guessing about the steps that the club took to get here vis-à-vis the J.T. Miller extension, vis-à-vis the Kuzmenko extension, and then trading Horvat. But for the most part, Canucks fans are just relieved to see this team make a future-forward move.

So when I wrote in the Athletic that I thought the return was a bit underwhelming, I was pretty heavily criticized for that, but the conversations that I’m having with talent evaluators and people in the industry match the tone of what you just sort of laid out. 

A lot of these players are viewed as relatively low upside, and I really like the short position that the Canucks have effectively bought against the New York Islanders, I think that’s the part of the deal that makes me higher on it than my industry contacts, but I’m surprised by how down most people in the business are about this deal, and I suspect that it’s probably in part explained by some of what Kevin Weekes is hinting at there, which is that there’s a sense that there might have been better offers out there available to the Vancouver Canucks, at least in the estimation of the industry.

Now, I think the Canucks obviously really valued getting Raty back, I think that’s a big part of this, and I wonder about if this is another part of it. 

When the Canucks come back from the All-Star break, they’re going to regroup in Newark, and all of a sudden, you’ve got your new head coach, the Boudreau drama is behind you, Bo Horvat has already been traded, Andrei Kuzmenko is already extended, and all of a sudden this season that’s been characterized by a remarkable amount of drama and speculation, and not just the obvious Boudreau twisting in the wind for months and months and then doing so in a really ugly way for ten days, not just the will-they-won’t they trade their captain stuff, not just the Kuzmenko speculation and “oh my goodness, how much is he going to earn given his production”. 

But also the HRC complaints, the fact that there’s a human rights tribunal case against the club, the family court proceedings against Francesco Aquilini that spilled out into public view.

It’s been a season from hell for this franchise, with so much of the attention on the young and the restless soap opera off the ice as opposed to just the normal, day-to-day experience on it. 

And all of a sudden, when this team regroups in Newark on the 5th of February, almost a week from now, what’s the sexiest storyline remaining around this club? What’s Luke Schenn going to fetch at the deadline? Does Ethan Bear sign an extension before the club has to give him his qualifying offer?

All of a sudden, the drama around this team could be dissipated, and I wonder if just turning the page, getting back to the routine, the day-to-day, getting back to what Patrik Allvin referred to as his job to create a safer space in the locker room for players, I wonder if that was part of the logic of doing this deal as expeditiously as the club decided to because all of a sudden it’s going to be a fresh day in Vancouver, and you can’t put a price on that for a team that’s been reeling all season long.

You can watch the full episode here: