The group of skaters out at UBC seems to be growing by the day, as do the number of news reports around the Vancouver Canucks and the upcoming season.
In his latest piece for Sportsnet,
Iain MacIntyre lists Bo Horvat, Tanner Pearson, Vasily Podkolzin, J.T. Miller, Thatcher Demko and Jason Dickinson as being among the on-ice participants.
Brendan Batchelor got a juicy quote from Bo about Podkolzin a couple of days ago:
And here are a few words from Dickinson:
Seems like Danila Klimovich has also made his way to town.
MacIntyre says the preseason skates will shift to Rogers Arena starting next week.
After the Canucks' brutal run-in with Covid-19 last season, Horvat is now an avid supporter of vaccination. This offseason, he got himself vaccinated as soon as he could and is encouraging others to follow in his footsteps.
Last week, the NHL released its health protocols for the upcoming season. The league is not making vaccination mandatory, but unvaccinated players will be severely restricted in what they're allowed to do — on the road, they'll basically be confined to their hotel rooms when they're not at the rink. And if they miss games due to Covid or aren't able to travel with their teams due to regional vaccination requirements, they'll be docked pay based on the number of days they miss.
After that announcement, and the league's directive that all staffers who will be within 12 feet of players at any time during the season must be fully vaccinated, San Jose Sharks associate coach Rocky Thompson resigned from his position last week. "Due to a medical exemption that prevents me from taking the COVID-19 vaccine, under the new League protocols, I am not permitted to fulfill my duties on the Sharks coaching staff at this time,"
he said in a statement issued by the Sharks.
Also, Elliotte Friedman
posted a blog to the Sportsnet website on Thursday. Here's what he had to say about the Hughes and Pettersson contract situations.
• I think there’s been more progress on Quinn Hughes than Elias Pettersson in Vancouver. I do wonder if Pettersson is waiting to see where Kirill Kaprizov’s contract comes down in Minnesota.
Contract-wise, no big dominoes have fallen so far this week among the league's remaining RFAs. B.C. boy Dennis Cholowski, a first-round draft pick in 2016, inked a one-year deal with a cap hit of $900,000 with the Seattle Kraken. Calgary's Connor Mackey took a slight pay cut from his $925,000 cap hit last season but got a one-way deal this time as he re-upped on a two-year contract with the Flames that carries a cap hit of $912,500. And on the UFA front, the Flames inked yet another former Vancouver Canucks when they signed 36-year-old Brad Richardson to a one-year deal at $800,000. Richardson, of course, is six seasons removed from his two years in Vancouver, having spent five years in Arizona and one in Nashville since his time with the Canucks.
Now, a couple of tidbits from Rick Dhaliwal.
First — after Covid-19 derailed the plans for 2020 seventh-rounder Viktor Persson to suit up for the Kamloops Blazers last season, it sounds like the defenseman is finally on his way to North America.
And on Friday, Dhaliwal suggested on his show that foward Tyler Ennis could be headed to Canucks training camp.
Now 31, Ennis has spent the last season-and-a-bit playing in his hometown of Edmonton. A first-round pick by Buffalo back in 2008, he had two 20-goal seasons with the Sabres and also put up 14 goals in 61 games with Ottawa in the 2019-20 season before he was dealt to the Oilers at the 2020 trade deadline. He didn't really click in the Edmonton mix, though, managing just nine points in 30 games last season.
One other note on an ex-Canuck, if you missed it: Ryan Kesler has signed on as a 'volunteer assistant coach' with the U.S. National Team Development Program.
A former member of the NTDP himself, Kesler will be working with the program's Under-18 team, supporting the next group of draft-eligible players. Their season kicks off next Friday, against the Muskegon Lumberjacks of the USHL.
Kesler's status as a volunteer is necessary because he's still technically under contract to the Anaheim Ducks. The 2021-22 season is the last year of the six-year contract extension with the cap hit of $6.875 million that he signed in Anaheim in 2015, one year after he was traded from the Canucks. After managing 60 games in the 2018-19 season to get himself to 1,001 career NHL games, he's entering his third full season on long-term injured reserve.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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