There was a point when Vancouver’s centre spine looked like one of the league’s best. Elias Pettersson was breaking through, JT Miller was producing at a high level, and Bo Horvat was giving the Canucks the kind of steady, two-way night after night presence every team wants down the middle. That version of the roster is gone now, and with Vancouver trying to rebuild that strength at centre, the Bo Horvat trade tree is worth tracing.
Horvat was moved to the New York Islanders on January 30, 2023, with the Canucks making clear they wanted a first-round pick as part of the return. New York met that demand, sending Vancouver a first-round selection in that year’s draft, veteran winger Anthony Beauvillier, and centre Aatu Räty.
The Canucks didn’t hold onto that first-rounder for long. About a month later, they bundled it with a second-round pick and sent the package to Detroit in exchange for defenceman Filip Hronek and a fourth-round pick.
Two-plus years later, the branches of that deal are easy to follow. Horvat has played 260 games for the Islanders, scoring 99 goals and adding 99 assists. He has also appeared in two playoff runs in blue and orange, in 2023 and 2024, matching the two postseasons he had with Vancouver, in 2015 and 2020.
Beauvillier’s Vancouver stop was shorter and quieter. He played 55 games across parts of two seasons, scoring 11 goals and finishing with 28 points before the Canucks dealt him to Chicago for a fifth-round pick. Vancouver then used that pick two days later in the package that brought Nikita Zadorov in from Calgary.
Räty is still in the picture. He is heading into his fourth season in Vancouver and has appeared in 102 NHL games for the Canucks since the trade, scoring 11 goals and posting 26 points. He has also won 59.7% of his faceoffs in a Canucks uniform.
The biggest return piece for Vancouver has been Hronek, and he has settled in nicely on the West Coast. The 28-year-old is coming off a career year, with eight goals, 49 points, and an average of 25:00 of ice time per game.
Detroit used the first-round pick it got from Vancouver to select Axel Sandin-Pellikka, now 21, who played 68 games in his first NHL action last season. The Red Wings also flipped the second-round pick they received from the Canucks to Nashville in a draft-day swap, and the Predators used that selection on Felix Nilsson, who has not yet played an NHL game.
The last piece of the Horvat tree, for now, is the fourth-round pick Vancouver got back from Detroit. The Canucks turned that into Ty Mueller in the 2023 Draft.
Mueller, 23, has played eight games for Vancouver and was a key part of Abbotsford’s Calder Cup-winning team in the spring of 2025. He brought a well-rounded game for Manny Malhotra, contributing in a variety of ways, and in that sense his style fit the mold of a young Bo Horvat during Horvat’s nine seasons and more than 600 games in Canucks colours.
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