The evolution of Bo Horvat, first line

centre

By JD Burke (/author/jd-burke/) Mar 27, 2018 10

When the Canucks drafted Bo Horvat ninth-overall in the 2013 draft, the
prospects of him developing into a first-line centre, much less a franchise
player, seemed an unlikely proposition.

Horvat's statistical profile in his junior career with the OHL's London
Knights looked more the part of a two-way centre with middle-six upside
than anything else.

That checks out when we use the pGPS (prospect graduation probabilities
system) developed by CanucksArmy's Jeremy Davis to look at the likelihood
that Horvat would develop into a full-time NHLer, and what calibre of
NHLer at that. Horvat carried a low likelihood of NHL success based on his
statistical and stature based comparable relative to most top-10 draft picks,
with just about 49 per cent going on to be full-time NHLers.

That sentiment rings true in each of the many scouting reports from the
industry's most respected outlets in the field. Read each of them and you're
likely to stumble across “low upside” with alarming regularity. A lot of them
saw Horvat as someone who would most likely be a third-line centre.
It was one of those rare moments where the scouts and the stats were in near-
perfect alignment. And they were both wrong.

Because make no mistake: Bo Horvat is a first-line centre.

That development has been a rare bright spot in an otherwise bleak and
unrewarding three seasons of Canucks hockey.

There are a number of different ways we can gauge a player's aptitude relative
to their peers to determine as much. The most obvious way is to look at a
player's point totals and find out if those place Horvat among the league's 31
best centres. Last season, Horvat nearly qualified with his 52 points in 81
games. This year, we can't lean on raw point totals because of all the time
Horvat lost to injury mid-season. Using point-per-game pace in its stead,
NHL.com places Horvat 49th in the NHL, though, I counted at least 12
players who either aren't full-time centres or don't play centre period that the
NHL had ahead of him.

By total ice time, the 18:34 a game that Horvat is playing on a per game basis
puts him into first line territory, comfortably, among the league's centres.

When we dig a little deeper, though, and use 5-on-5 totals, Horvat's plaudits
as a top-line centre become clearer. It would be easy enough for one to look at
these numbers and reasonably suggest he's a top-30 forward, period, much
less one when adjusting for position. If you look at this graph using a tableau
image from Bill Comeau's database (https://t.co/LZ79Qu1pJn) (well worth a
visit if you're into this kind of stuff ) you'll find he's at or above the 75th
percentile among NHL forwards for most relevant statistics at 5-on-5.

As one might imagine, Horvat's development into an upper echelon centre

didn't happen overnight, nor did every part of his game ascend to those lofty
heights in unison. We often say that development doesn't occur in a linear
framework, and Horvat stands as proof positive of this truism among younger
hockey players.
With that, let's take a piece by piece look at Horvat's game and how he's
elevated it to that of a first-line centre against all the odds.

Nothing was given to Horvat. He's had to earn it every step of the way with
the Canucks.

When he first made the team out of training camp in the 2014-15 season,
then head coach Willie Desjardins used Horvat as a fourth-line centre with
Derek Dorsett and Jannik Hansen on his flanks. The results? Well, they left a
lot to be desired.

Up to the Christmas break, Horvat was towing a 43.3 CF%, with only one
goal and five assists to show for those first 20 games. Then Horvat did the
unexpected — he improved his skating significantly and came out of the
Christmas break like a bat out of hell. In his final 48 games, Horvat had 11
goals and six assists at 5-on-5 alone and his shot share metrics improved by
over three per cent, too.
As Horvat became increasingly proficient at the NHL level, Desjardins'
started to allot him ice time closer to that of a third-line centre. In Horvat's
first five games, he played a scant 44:52 at 5-on-5; in his last five games, it
was closer to 70 minutes.

It was just a sample of what was to come for Horvat in his next season.

The club had acquired Brandon Sutter with the hope of apportioning him the
club's most difficult minutes defensively. But then Sutter's season effectively
ended 20 games in, and that thrust Horvat into a brutally difficult situation
for a 20-year-old second-year centre.
In that role, Horvat struggled, naturally, to keep his head above water. In the
final 62 games of the season, Horvat's ratio of shot control stayed at the nearly
46 per cent benchmark he'd set to finish last season.

Offensively, though, Horvat flourished. In the 2015-16 season, Horvat

reached the 40-point mark with very little power play time, which put him
comfortably in second line territory.

It ran counter to everything the scouting community had told us about

Horvat from the start. The expectation was that as he'd make the transition to
the NHL, it would be his play defensively that made him valuable. Instead, he
was producing at what many saw as his absolute offensive ceiling in just Year
2, while all the while losing the shot and goal differential battle at 5-on-5.

In the next season, the hope was that with Sutter returning to the lineup,
Horvat's 5-on-5 numbers would normalize and mirror the expectations set by
his two-way plaudits borne of a distinguished junior career.

Instead, Horvat continued to shatter the offensive ceiling with anchors tying
his team to the floor on the shot and goal clock alike. With Horvat on the ice,
the Canucks surrendered over 2.5 extra shot attempts per hour and 0.15 extra
goals per hour.

If we boil these defensive contributions down to a single number, according to

the GAR (Goals Above Replacement) metric developed by former Hockey-
Graphs writer turned Colorado Avalanche analyst Dawson Sprigings, there
was but a handful of centres last year with a worse defensive impact than
Horvat.

While the Canucks were struggling with Horvat on the ice defensively, he was
contributing offence at rates not even imagined by the most optimistic among
us at the time of his draft. By season's end, Horvat hit 52 points, which is
about what one might expect from a first-line centre.

It was hard to label him a first line centre though with only one of the boxes
checked off. To classify Horvat as a true first-line centre, I had to see him do
it at both ends of the ice. Hell, not being among the league's worst penalty
killers wouldn't hurt either.
Ask and you shall receive, or so they say.

This year, the Canucks are controlling just over 49 per cent of the shots at
5-on-5 with Horvat on the ice. It's difficult to overstate what a massive
improvement that is year-to-year, especially when the circumstances around
him are deteriorating as fast as they have for the Canucks this season.

Interestingly, Horvat's developed a better two-way profile not by improving

his efforts at the defensive end of the ice. He's gone the unconventional way
of developing this part of his game — producing so much offence as to help
his team's on-ice numbers in spite of everything they give up defensively. It's a
question of net value, and Horvat's producing so much offensively it's almost
putting his team in black in spite of everything that happens in his own zone
with him on the ice.

On the penalty kill, Horvat's numbers have risen to near respectability. His
team only surrenders an extra three or so shot attempts an hour with him on
the ice on the kill; last year that number was a staggering, league-worst 38.4
shot attempts an hour.

Meanwhile, Horvat continues to reach new heights offensively. Based on the

scoring pace Horvat's maintained to this point in the season, were he healthy
all the way through it, he'd hit a new career-high in points of 57.
By every stretch of the imagination, Horvat is now a first line centre — and a
damn good one at that. He might not be the type to lead a team to the
Stanley Cup, but there are so few of those in the NHL, and I think that
reflects in the distribution of them over the last decade.

Then again, at the rate that Horvat shatters expectations, perhaps we should
be careful to place limitations (https://canucksarmy.com/2014/03
/10/reasonable-expectations-for-the-future-is-bo-horvat-a-top-6-c/) on
where he can lead this team.
 (Top photo: Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

What did you think of this story?

MEH SOLID AWESOME

J.D. Burke is a contributing writer for The Athletic Vancouver. His previous work
has appeared on Canucks Army, where he was the site's Managing Editor, and
also on Sporting News Canada. You can listen to Burke weekly on TSN 1040
AM. Follow JD on Twitter @ @JJD
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