Article content

Say it ain’t so, Willie.

Bo Horvat on a fourth line and Markus Granlund on a second?

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Botchford: Bo Horvat, fourth liner. Wait, what? Back to video

Five months ago, Horvat was finishing one of the more remarkable second-half runs a 20-year-old Canucks sophomore has had, leading the team in points for three-and-a-half months.

Now, in the first meaningful hockey game since then, Horvat is skating on a line with Alex Burrows and Derek Dorsett.

Life moves fast.

Really, there were only two good things to come out of last season. One was Ben Hutton, the other, Sven-Bo or Bo-Sven or whatever you want to call the Sven Baertschi-Horvat chemistry.

It was head coach Willie Desjardins’s unflinching loyalty to the duo that made it happen, too. It finally paid off mid-season when Horvat was launched on a run that would see him score 30 points in his final 43 games.

“He believed in us,” Horvat said of his coach this week. “He believed in us as hockey players. He knew what we were capable of. He knew it was going to be tough on us early in the season, and it was tough on us for a stretch.