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And so it begins: once again, the Canucks kick off their season in Edmonton |
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Wednesday October 12 - Vancouver Canucks at Edmonton Oilers - 7 p.m. - Sportsnet, Sportsnet 650
For the fourth consecutive year, the Vancouver Canucks will kick off their new NHL season against the Edmonton Oilers.
The trend began on Oct. 2, 2019. Connor McDavid scored the third-period game winner in a 3-2 victory for the Oilers. Vancouver's goals were scored by Alex Edler and Tanner Pearson, and Jacob Markstrom made 19 saves for the Canucks.
In their debuts in Canucks colours, J.T. Miller and Tyler Myers each had one assist.
Myers, of course, starts this season on the injured list — a relatively rare occurrence for him. Other than a couple of stints in COVID protocol, his only other absence in three seasons with the Canucks came during the 2020 playoff bubble, when he missed seven games with a shoulder injury. He was the only Canuck to dress for all 82 games last season.
As for Miller — I sure hope he was exercising his veteran privileges and going at half-speed during preseason. He wasn't much of a factor, with three assists and three shots on goal in his three exhibition appearances. Probably the No. 1 thing I'll be looking for on Wednesday night is to see if he dials his intensity back to the levels that we're more accustomed to seeing. After he talked about how he wants to better control his emotions this season, I don't want to see him become too passive and lose the edge that makes him effective.
One bit of good news for Miller: he has been officially reunited with now-healthy Brock Boeser. Based on line rushes from practice on Tuesday, the pair look set to start the season on a line with Tanner Pearson.
Everything else is pretty much status quo. Conor Garland's back with Bo Horvat and Vasily Podkolzin on a line that showed some chemistry in preseason, and Elias Pettersson is set to centre Andrei Kuzmenko and Nils Hoglander.
I can still hear Kuzmenko in my head from last Friday's postgame: "Petey, Petey, pass to me!"
And while Nils Aman, as expected, gets the assignment at centre on the new-look fourth line with Dakota Joshua and Curtis Lazar, Linus Karlsson was nowhere to be found at practice on Tuesday, or on the Canucks' roster sheet on the NHL website on Wednesday.
If you missed it, the Canucks set a new league standard when they submitted their season-opening roster on Monday — literally utilizing every dollar of available LTIR space and thus maximizing the salary-cap cushion that will be available to them during the season.
For fans that were hoping for big organizational changes from the new regime, the offseason roster adjustments weren't as dramatic as they could have been. But pulling off this sort of administrative miracle is a very different way of doing business — especially when they didn't work backwards with a last-minute signing that was designed to soak up the last of the leftover room, like the other teams that came close to maximization.
If you want to go further down that rabbit hole, check out my story for Forbes:
If the details make your head hurt, all you need to know is that once Phillip Di Giuseppe was assigned to Season-Opening Injured Reserve, the Canucks made a quick flip to send down waiver-exempt Linus Karlsson and bring up waiver-exempt Danila Klmovich, and achieve their perfect 22-player opening-day roster.
The bad news for Karlsson is that it looks like, for now, anyway, he isn't being recalled. And in many ways it makes sense for the team to keep battle-tested Sheldon Dries as their spare forward. He's older, at 28. He knows the North American game and has 59 games of NHL experience, including 11 games with the Canucks last season. And it's OK if he spends time in the press box as a healthy scratch. Karlsson can use more reps and lots of ice time, even if that's at the AHL level to start.
As for the defence, Quinn Hughes was back in his usual spot with Luke Schenn on Tuesday. So it looks like he will start on the left side.
But — of course — there's another wrinkle.
Word from the coach is that Ekman-Larsson will play in Edmonton.
As for the Oilers, here's how their lines are expected to roll:
After the Canucks and Oilers met twice in preseason, I don't think there are any real surprises here. Aside, perhaps, from the fact that after another long offseason of trade speculation, Jesse Puljujarvi is starting the season on Connor McDavid's right wing. Nice work if you can get it.
So as we prepare for the beginning of another season — with expectations that are high and an injured list that is still pretty long — at least the Canucks made one important offseason acquisition. At last, they have a team dog!
And finally, if you missed it, there's a ton of Canucks content in Elliotte Friedman's first written '32 Thoughts' blog of the season, over at Sportsnet.
Perhaps most concerning — he continues to beat the drum that a contract extension for Bo Horvat must land at a cap hit of $7 million-plus — perhaps in the range of Sean Couturier's $7.75x8, which kicks in this year for the soon-to-be 30-year-old. Horvat turns 28 in April, so he'll be more than a year-and-a-half younger when his next deal takes effect.
On the bright side, Friedman is picking Thatcher Demko as his Vezina Trophy winner.
And in an odd aside, he throws cold water on a potential trade for Pittsburgh defenseman Marcus Pettersson by the Canucks. Of course, Jim Rutherford made the trade to acquire Pettersson in Pittsburgh, so I can see where the connection comes from. But I don't feel like we've heard any chatter at all about this since the beginning of the offseason, so I've been assuming that it wasn't a thing. Pettersson's a lefty, too. If there's an upgrade coming on defense at some point, it really needs to be on the right side.
I'll leave it there for now. Looking forward to seeing how things go on Wednesday night.
Enjoy the game!
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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