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For almost as long as he can remember, Bo Horvat heard that he wasn’t a very good skater.

And from a young age, the aspiring centre took what he heard and sought to beat the critics.

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“You want to be the best,” Horvat says. “You want to be better. You want to beat the next guy. That just kept me driving.”

It’s a work ethic that was instilled in him by his parents: stay humble, work hard, never be satisfied.

“Always prove to yourself and always prove to other people that you’re better than who they think you are,” Horvat says.

That drive carried him to the Ontario Hockey League powerhouse London Knights, then to the NHL draft and the Vancouver Canucks. At his first NHL training camp in 2013, Horvat arrived thinking he knew what being fit enough for success in professional hockey was.

And then he met Henrik and Daniel Sedin.

“I thought I was in great shape,” he recalls, laughing, of his 18 year old self. “And then you watch these guys, you were like, ‘hey, I’m a ways off.'”