When I looked at these games on the schedule, they didn't seem frightening at first. But after you explained it and elaborated, it's scary af.
Here's my intake on this. Horvat as many of you have mentioned has no points, but getting lots of opportunities to score. I've watched him play in Utica and he really does look faster than he was in training camp. A few negatives are that his faceoff stats don't look superb and his offensive finishing skills as well as his consistency seemed to lack(sometimes bobbles the puck on a few scoring chances etc) during his tenure. When someone goes through injury, we might expect these kinds of things, especially our rookies and prospects. He's been, well, under the bus lately and we need to either send him to junior, or get his 9 games ASAP. I want Horvat playing as a lot games. If he's called up to our NHL team, whats the point? Would WD want to switch our winning line up? Most likely not, but with the suspension of Burrows, that could be possible that Horvat will be called up since Sestito isn't much of an improvement(other than physicality which we will need in the California games). So he would then get scratched, (gets lesser games played) which might also stunt his growing. I say give him a few games and if he isn't doing much, throw him in the OHL and let him develop there.
Might point is, he needs to play a lot, get improving, work on his bad habits, etc. If he's getting few games here and there, that will be a waste and could hinder his develop since he won't be getting anywhere. And I really don't want that to happen to our arguably best prospect (not named Virtanen) IMO.