Bo Horvat was a top-10 pick in the 2013 NHL Entry Draft by the Vancouver Canucks. If you were tuning into the Canucks for the first time on Saturday, you certainly wouldn’t know it. The Canucks chose to deploy him as a fourth-line centre primarily alongside Alex Burrows and Derek Dorsett. He saw a few shifts in the third period with Jake Virtanen and Sven Baertschi, but was primarily on the fourth line.
That cannot happen on a nightly basis if the Canucks want to win hockey games.
When Horvat first joined the Canucks, he was primarily a fourth-line centre because he was a rookie and the Canucks wanted to ease him into the NHL and start his development process slowly.