Bo Horvat: Fantasy Hockey Outlook With Islanders
I apologize in advance to anyone that has Bo Horvat in fantasy hockey because his outlook just got a hell of a lot worse. Horvat was traded to the Islanders yesterday and his fantasy owners shouldn’t be too thrilled about the landing spot. Out of all of the places that Horvat could have been traded to, this might be the single worst spot from a fantasy perspective.
We went over it in the Lou Lamiorello post I just did. This Islanders offense stinks. Half the battle in being productive from a fantasy perspective is racking up the cheap assists on good teams. Horvat has 31 goals and 23 assists through 49 games. What kind of production could Horvat had put up in Colorado or Boston? Instead, he gets this dreadful Islanders offense.
31st in the powerplay. More than three goals in a game once. They’re not the kind of numbers that get me hot and bothered from a fantasy perspective. The early indications are that Horvat will play first line center with Mat Barzal and Josh Bailey flanking him. I’m way lower than most on Barzal but regardless, I can’t see how that’s even an upgrade of what he had in Vancouver. Elias Pettersson, Quinn Hughes, and Andrei Kuzmenko on the power play alone already trump this.
If you own Horvat, I’d be looking to move him. Horvat is currently 27th in total fantasy points on the season for skaters. He’s having a career year but I’d expect some regression when transitioning to the Islanders. I’ll show you Horvat’s metrics here in a second but I want you to also take them with a grain of salt. It was a tire fire in Vancouver. In a contract year, Horvat wanted to fill up the stat sheet on a bad team and who could blame him? With the Islanders, he’s going to be asked to be way more of a 200-foot player. The defensive metrics playing in this system with Ilya Sorokin will improve.
My question is how can he possibly maintain this scoring pace in New York? You’re asking him to go to a team that never scores and be the only driver of offense. Unless Lou gets another piece, I’m a big time sell high when it comes to fantasy.
High scoring defensemen are the hardest commodity to find in fantasy. In our league I traded Horvat and Tyson Barrie to Emma for Adam Fox. However, that trade took place prior to being moved to the Islanders. If you can trade Horvat to another owner for a different elite player, it’s something I’d try to take advantage of.
