There is just one restricted free agent left to sign for Jim Benning and it’s the most important one: Bo Horvat. But while his agent negotiates, Horvat himself is enjoying some well-deserved R&R in-between his training sessions.
Horvat has been sharing pictures from his summer on his Instagram account, including a great shot of him carrying his French bulldog Gus up a hill in a similar fashion to how he’ll have to carry the Canucks next season if they have any hope of making the playoffs. Gus, incidentally, has his own Instagram account that shows some of the fun times on the beach that led to him being so tuckered out.
But it’s another shot on his Instagram Stories that is a bit more worrying, as it was taken from the back of a moving pickup truck.
Images on Stories disappear after 24 hours, but a Redditor screencapped the image and posted it to the r/Canucks subreddit, where fans immediately expressed their concern. One made an observation about why it’s particularly inappropriate for Horvat to be doing this.
Horvat has worn the number 53 since his days in Junior with the London Knights. He chose that number in honour of a player he never got to be teammates with: Ian Jenkins. Both Horvat and Jenkins were selected by the Knights in the 2011 OHL draft, but Jenkins tragically died just a few days later.
Jenkins fell out of the back of a pickup truck, struck his head, and passed away in the hospital.
Since Jenkins wore the number 35, so Horvat reversed it to honour his memory and keeps Jenkins’ motto in mind: “Have a purpose.”
Horvat definitely shouldn’t be riding in the back of a pickup truck in general, as it’s a risky, dangerous thing to do no matter how careful you are, but he especially should know better given the reason why he wears the number 53.
I get it: he’s in his early-20’s, and people in their early-20’s do stupid things sometimes. I’m not going to lie: when I was about that age, I used to ride in the back of a pickup truck too or was behind the wheel when others did so. It was dumb and inexcusable: even with the canopy on the back, any sort of collision or crash could have been disastrous.
We shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have done it. Bo Horvat definitely shouldn’t do it.
To be fair, Horvat doesn’t actually appear in the picture. It’s possible, if unlikely, that someone else took this picture with his phone and uploaded it to Instagram. And, since it was removed from his Instagram Story before I could see it, I couldn't verify its provenance. So Bo, if you didn't actually ride in the back of a pickup truck, just consider this a request for the future: don’t ride in the back of a pickup truck, please.
