from Iain MacIntyre of Sportsnet,

When he was traded Monday by the only National Hockey League team he has played for, Bo Horvat was starting a long-planned family holiday at Disney World before reporting for this weekend’s All-Star Game in Florida.

It was a chance, he told Sportsnet on Friday before leaving Vancouver, to unplug from the stress and craziness of a disastrous Canucks season that had the team’s 27-year-old captain swirling at the epicentre of trade rumours since it began.

Horvat and his wife, Holly, were having custom All-Star Game jean jackets made for their small children, Gunnar (2 ½) and Tulsa (9 months), with the Canucks logo on them.

“Keepsakes,” Bo explained.

The last of them, it turns out.

On Monday, Vancouver traded him to the New York Islanders for winger Anthony Beauvillier, centre-prospect Aatu Raty and a conditional first-round draft pick. When Horvat flies to New York on Sunday night, instead of turning west to practise with the Canucks in New Jersey, Horvat will head east to meet the Islanders on Long Island.

The Canucks checked all the boxes on their trade wish list: a solid, proven NHL player in Beauvillier who is two years younger than Horvat, an A-grade prospect in Raty who has already logged 12 NHL games this season and a first-rounder.

It is the biggest in-season trade for the organization since holdout Pavel Bure was sent to the Florida Panthers in 1999. That was five general managers ago for the Canucks. This is a massive transaction that will, one way or another, define the Jim Rutherford-Patrik Allvin era.

continued