This is the kind of move Lou Lamoriello should have made two or three years ago. The New York Islanders have finally made a trade for an offensive player as they acquired former Canucks captain Bo Horvat in a 4-player deal.
All of the Islanders woes from this year and last season could have been avoided if GM Lou Lamoriello caught up with the times a bit and acquired some offensive talent that wasn’t in their mid 30’s.
In truth, the only reason why the Islanders missed the playoffs last season and are battling for the Wild Card spots this year is because they’ve relied far too heavily on 2000’s “Dead Puck Era” defensive hockey, which just simply isn’t the way the game is played anymore.
There are more penalties called, less restrictions on puck movement, far less stick infractions/infringements by defenders on attackers that enabled the “Dead Puck Era” to survive as long as it did, and just simply better skaters in the league today.
Now, it doesn’t surprise me that the Islanders and their GM are stuck in the early 2000’s as Lou Lamoriello was responsible for creating one of the defining teams of the “Dead Puck Era”: the 2000’s New Jersey Devils. Those Devils teams thrived on extremely stringent defensive hockey on the backs of Hall of Fame defenders like Scott Stevens and Rob Niedermayer, along with outstanding goaltending from arguably the greatest ever goalie to play the game in Martin Brouder.
Scoring once or twice and expecting to the game was commonplace for those teams as they had the defense and the rule flexibility to believe so. That’s just not the case anymore, and the Islanders have suffered for it.
Sure, New York had some great success when they went to the Conference Finals in 2020 and 2021, but when the rest of the league figured out how to get past their defense, they folded and finished 37-35-2 with just 84 points last season. Gifted offensive talents, such as Mathew Barzel, Brock Nelson, and Anders Lee, were posting stat lines of less than 50 points a season due to the nature of the Islanders style of play, which should tell you everything you need to know about the shortcomings of the Islanders system.
And even though I don’t agree with the firing of former HC Barry Trotz, this kind of defensive rigidity got him fired.
So, back to current day, the move to not only bring in a former captain in this league (which is a very rare leadership trait to have earned), but also a player in the midst of a career scoring season (Bo Horvat currently is on pace for 88-90 points) is one of the best things Lamoriello has done as the Islanders GM.
The Islanders (57 PTS) have a great opportunity to overtake their divisional rival Pittsburgh Penguins (57 PTS) in the standings and playoff race as they only behind them on the head-to-head matchup tiebreaker as of me writing this article, while it also gives Barzel another offensive player to grow and develop from. And ensuring Barzel transforms into one of the Top-10 best centers in the league must be the #1 priority for any Islanders general manager as he’s just too talented to give up on, even if his recent season point tallies haven’t been too impressive.
Moreover, the Islanders pretty much fleeced the Canucks with this deal. Giving up Aatu Raty, a 2021 2nd round pick that has pretty much fallen off the face of the earth since his early Top-10 talent evaluation, Anthony Beauvillier, who hasn’t scored more than 40 points in a season since his career began seven years ago, and a 2023 1st round pick that they hope will be in the mid to late 20s isn’t a lot for a player of Horvat’s caliber.
I did say that the Canucks should look to move on from Horvat as he just wasn’t able to get the Canucks over the line but giving up a 27-year-old player with over 400 points for a pick and two Bottom-6 players isn’t what I had in mind. I thought he would have gone for at least two 1sts, a decent prospect, and maybe a Top-6 winger.
We’ll have to see if this move sends the Islanders over the edge, but I have confidence Horvat can and will succeed in Long Island.
PS: Signing Horvat to an 8-year, $68M deal was also a brilliant move by Lou. Seems like he finally has woken up from his early 2000’s slumber.
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