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NHL trade grades: Bo Horvat moves to Islanders. Is it a lose-lose deal?

The trade

Islanders get: Center Bo Horvat.

Canucks get: Left winger Anthony Beauvillier, center Aatu Raty, 2023 first-round pick (top-12 protected).

Dom Luszczyszyn: It’s not often that we see a lose-lose trade in this league, but the Canucks and Islanders may have pulled it off here.

For the Islanders, it’s a move that reeks of desperation for a team that’s farther out of the playoff race than meets the eye. On the surface, the Islanders are two points behind, but in reality, they’re playing at a pace that puts them six points behind the Sabres. That’s difficult ground to make up, especially with a much stronger Panthers team nipping at their heels. The Islanders’ chances of making the playoffs were 14 percent before the trade. They’re 19 percent now.

That’s not a big difference, but that doesn’t mean Horvat isn’t a big difference-maker — just that the Islanders are in a precarious position where it will take more than Horvat for them to get where they need to go. Horvat is a first-line talent with a penchant for scoring goals and eating big minutes. That’s something this team desperately needs and his biggest asset being on the power play is a major plus. The Islanders rank 31st there.

The fit makes sense, it just doesn’t feel like a move a team in New York’s position should make. Yes, the first-round pick is protected, but there’s a very real chance the Islanders end up missing the playoffs and surrendering a mid-first. They’re in that mushy middle where the chance of that pick landing from 13th to 16th is 45 percent. In a deep draft for an aging team outside its window, it’s a move that likely just prolongs the inevitable. A perhaps even more daunting scenario is that the pick isn’t protected if it slides to 2024 — a very risky proposition for this team.

The Canucks did well to get that first from the Islanders. They targeted a team whose chances of making the playoffs were slim and capitalized. It’s a smarter move than getting a pick in the 24-32 range. Still, it’s the part where the team acquires Beauvillier that sours things. It feels like the Canucks brass’ own brand of desperation, acquiring an NHL player who fits a timeline that doesn’t exist for this franchise. An overpaid one at that.

The first is a nice get, but the other assets don’t really move the needle for a team that should be gearing towards a rebuild. If this is the first phase of a “retool,” it’s not a very promising one.

Islanders grade: C-
Canucks grade: C+

Shayna Goldman: At first glance, I was wondering what was more surprising: The fact the Islanders legitimately made a splash or that Lou Lamoriello acquired a player he didn’t have in New Jersey or Toronto. But don’t forget, the Devils had the ninth pick that was used to select Horvat back in 2013, and traded it on draft day for Cory Schneider. Because that connection is still there of course it is.

The thing that’s odd about the Islanders is that two of the big-name players they’ve been interested in recently — Nazem Kadri and Bo Horvat — are both centers. That never fully made sense to me, considering how much they have invested in their center depth as it is. At the top of the lineup, that’s already Mathew Barzal and Brock Nelson. Centers generally cost more than wingers, so it hurts if the Islanders paid for a center to use on the wing. The other option, of course, is shifting one of their pivots over as an internal high-end winger add that they’ve always needed and playing Horvat down the middle.

Either way, at the end of the day this brings in the spark this team has craved for some time in their top six. Horvat’s frequent shooting is what this team needs. He shouldn’t be expected to shoot at 21.7 percent forever, but can still be productive when that eventually regresses.

Having said that, this is a big price to pay for a pending unrestricted free agent, and it only puts more pressure on the team to push back into the playoffs. The Islanders’ window is now with this core, and this move puts even more emphasis on that — especially with what went back Vancouver’s way. If the 2023 pick does end up going to Vancouver, they’ll be without a first-rounder four straight years. That, paired with the fact that they parted with one of their best prospects, is incredibly risky for a rental — even more so when it’s not clear if this move alone will be enough to push the Islanders back into the competitive Eastern Conference playoff picture. Any other move probably requires quite a bit of creativity because the Islanders aren’t overflowing with assets at this point.

The Canucks, on the other hand, probably didn’t have a ton of leverage. Everyone knows the chaos that’s going on with Vancouver, their cap situation, and the fact that negotiations for an extension weren’t going well. Still, they brought back a 25-year-old forward who could use a change of scenery in Beauviller. And if things don’t work out well for him in Vancouver, they could still move him sometime in the next year to recoup more assets. Aatu Raty has some potential, and a first-rounder seemed to be key in this return. It’s just hard to say that’s enough for one of their bigger trade pieces at the start of a retool/rebuild, or whatever management wants to call it. The Canucks could have gotten a lot more had they just moved JT Miller last year, but that’s something they’re going to keep paying for.

Islanders grade: C+
Canucks grade: B-

Sean Gentille: Stripped of context — those pesky big-picture bits about the Canucks’ disconnect with reality, or the decisions that brought them to a point where their only viable course of action with their captain was to move him out — this is a narrow win for Vancouver. Congratulations to their fans, who are definitely psyched about the whole deal.

You can count on Jim Rutherford for certain things these days, other than presiding over the public humiliation of an outgoing head coach. He’s going to make his moves early, if possible, and he’s going to be direct about the return he’s seeking. We know he wanted an established player in his mid-20s, and Beauvillier, 26 in June and in his seventh NHL season, qualifies as such. I liked this deal a lot less for the Canucks when it seemed like he was the primary piece headed back; the possibility that Rutherford and GM Patrik Allvin would sell all the way out in favor of the next couple of seasons had only seemed to grow. Beauvillier’s profile — a young-ish, good skater with a 21-goal season on his resume — is the exact sort of thing Rutherford prioritizes.

Beauvillier’s value, of course, has cratered along with his finishing ability; his shooting percentage has gone steadily downward from nearly 16 in 2017-18 to 8.0 in 2022-23. He makes $4.15 million through next season, so his greatest value to Vancouver is as a future flip candidate, but that AAV is ugly.

The actual return for Vancouver is Raty; his prospect career has been up (he was an early candidate to go at the top of the 2021 draft), and down (he wound up being taken 52nd) before normalizing as a likely top-nine NHL forward, according to Scott Wheeler.

He’s still a center, and he’s certainly worth a flier, given Vancouver’s near-total lack of viable bodies down the middle. A protected 2023 pick is what it is; what the Canucks should root for is the Islanders to miss the playoffs so they have a better shot at a top-10 pick in 2024.

The good news there? Even with Horvat, they probably will; The Capitals, Penguins and Sabers are ahead of them in the wild-card race, and the Panthers aren’t far behind. In theory, adding Horvat is great; Lou Lamoriello spent the offseason trying to add offensive ability, then watched his failure play out in a big way. If they can extend Horvat as a long-term 1A behind Barzal, even better — although anyone expecting this season’s 52-goal pace to continue will be disappointed. There’s also something to be said for trying to make the most of Ilya Sorokin’s Vezina-caliber play this season. But overall, the likelihood that they gave up two decent pieces for a few more goals on their way to the draft lottery looms too large to ignore.

Islanders grade: C
Canucks grade: C+

(Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

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