In a veteran league that eats its young, 19-year-old Vancouver Canucks rookie Bo Horvat has held down a man’s role this season.
“He’s been great for us,” Canucks captain Henrik Sedin told Sportsnet back in February. “He’s playing first and foremost. To rely on him as a 19-year-old to make the plays he’s making, and play against top guys in the NHL and being able to hold his own – that’s impressive.”
Since making his regular season debut in early November, Horvat has been Vancouver’s everyday fourth-line centreman, an uncommon role for a teenager. Fourth-line centremen in the National Hockey League are generally veteran players, face-off winning behemoths.
Looking around the league, we can identify 26 everyday fourth-line centremen this season. Our parameters for an ‘everyday fourth-line centre’ is a player who is fourth among the pivots on his club in even-strength ice-time, and has appeared in at least 40 games this season.
So how does Horvat stack up when compared with the rank and file fourth-line pivots in the NHL?
Age
Horvat is far and away the youngest everyday fourth-line centre in the NHL this season.
Of the 26 players that qualified for our sample the average age is 29 and Horvat is two years younger than Anaheim Ducks centre Rickard Rakell – the second youngest player in this group. So the promising rookie is a full decade younger than the average NHL player holding down a similar role.
To give you a sense of just how veteran a group this is, only five of the NHL’s everyday fourth-line centremen are under the age of 25.
Time-on-ice
Looking at even-strength ice-time per game, Horvat is tied with Washington Capitals centre Jay Beagle for fifth among everyday fourth-line centremen.
Only nine of the 26 everyday NHL fourth-line centremen in our sample have logged under 10 minutes at 5-on-5 per game this season, while Horvat is among a group of 10 players who have logged more than 10:30.
Faceoffs
Your prototypical NHL fourth-line centreman is a face-off winning machine and several of the centremen in our 26-player sample appear to do little else but win draws and get off of the ice.
Montreal Canadiens pivot Manny Malhotra, Nashville Predators faceoff specialist Paul Gaustad, and Winnipeg Jets veteran Jim Slater, are three such players. They’ve all won more than 58 percent of their draws this season, but see the ice for less than 10 minutes at 5-on-5 in an average game.
Horvat has won 52.3 percent of his faceoffs this season, a stellar number for a 19-year-old rookie. Young players generally have their lunch eaten by veterans in the faceoff circle, but Horvat is putting together one of the best seasons between the hash marks that we’ve seen since Jonathan Toews won over 53 percent of his draws as a 19-year-old in 2007-08.
That isn’t enough to stand out in this group of specialists though. He ranks 19th out of our group of 26 in faceoff win percentage.
Deployment
The majority of everyday fourth-line centreman in the NHL are tasked with starting a high percentage of their shifts 200 feet away from their opponent’s net.
From Malhotra and Gaustad, to New York Rangers pivot Dominic Moore and Chicago’s Marcus Kruger – there are five players in this sample who are carrying an offensive-zone start rate below 30 percent on the season. Generally if you’re an NHL-level fourth-line centreman, you better be able to win some draws in your own end.
Only three players in our sample currently have an offensive-zone start percentage above 50 percent.
Horvat’s offensive-zone start rate is currently at 49.7 percent for the season, so he just misses inclusion in that latter group, but his deployment still qualifies him as something of an outlier among everyday fourth-line centremen.
Offence
Fourth-line centreman don’t generally earn their paycheques, or their share of plaudits, by scoring goals in bunches. In a salary capped league where parity rules, icing a fourth-line that can chip in the odd goal is useful, but it’s a luxury item.
It’s a luxury item that the Canucks have enjoyed and availed themselves of in Horvat’s rookie year.
With 11 goals and 21 points on the season, almost all of them at even-strength, Horvat has been a dynamic point producer for an everyday fourth-line player. Of the 26 players in this sample, in fact, Horvat has been the single most efficient goal scorer and the most efficient point producer by a decent margin.
Possession
In the NHL, fourth-lines are often buried by shot attempt differential, and that’s reflected in the underlying results of the players in our sample.
Of our 26 players only four centreman are in the black by on-ice Corsi For percentage (Rakell, Jacob Josefson, Marcus Kruger and Brian Boyle), while 12 players have managed an on-ice shot attempt differential below 45 percent.
The Canucks have controlled 44.6 percent of 5-on-5 shot attempts with Horvat on the ice this season, so he’s narrowly in that group of 12.
It’s not unusual for a teenage NHL player to struggle at driving play, and there’s some positive news for the Canucks on this front: Horvat’s puck possession game appears to be getting stronger as the season goes on.
In 23 games since the All-Star break the Canucks have controlled 47.6 percent of shot attempts with Horvat on the ice, and they’ve controlled 53.1 percent of shot attempts when Horvat shares the line with Ronalds Kenins.
It’s less than a 200-minute sample so there isn’t anything predictive about it, but Kenins and Horvat have flashed some Big Blue level chemistry over the past six weeks. If they can keep it up, Vancouver could have the makings of a truly elite fourth forward line.
