Tuesday December 14 - Columbus Blue Jackets vs. Vancouver Canucks - 7 p.m. - maybe
Will the Canucks get a chance to try to stretch their winning streak to five games against the Blue Jackets?
Tuesday's morning skate was cancelled after Luke Schenn and Juho Lammikko tested positive for Covid-19, said the team.
From the impressively detailed
press release:
"Vancouver Canucks players were recently tested on Sunday, December 12, in accordance with the NHL's COVID-19 Protocol, and the club was informed of Schenn's positive result on Monday. All players, coaches and training staff conducted additional COVID-19 testing on Monday and the team was informed of Lammikko's positive result this morning. The team's travelling party all tested again this morning and results from today's tests are expected to be received prior to tonight's game."
At first, I jumped to the conclusion that this had something to do with the Carolina Hurricanes, who added two more players to the Covid protocol list on Monday, and who played the Calgary Flames last Thursday. The Flames had their game on Monday cancelled after six players were placed in protocol, and three more names were added to that list on Tuesday. Carolina has also now announced four more players who have tested positive, all of whom played Sunday against Vancouver along with already-in-protocol Seth Jarvis: Ian Cole, Steven Lorentz, Jordan Staal and Andrei Svechnikov.
The Boston Bruins also played the Flames last week, on Saturday, and had two players placed in protocol on Tuesday.
But if Schenn's positive result came from a test on Sunday morning, that would have happened *before* the game against the Hurricanes. So for now, the situation seems murky.
At the media availability following the NHL's board of governors' meetings in Florida last week, deputy commissioner Bill Daly reiterated an important point about how the NHL has been handling Covid cases and why they haven't postponed more games this year. He said that, for the most part, players had been contracting the virus through community spread, rather than outbreaks with teams. They can tell by looking at the strains of the virus that have infected the players.
In the two previous cases where games were scrubbed — with Ottawa and the Islanders — those postponements only occurred when the medical team determined that the clubs hadn't been able to get their outbreaks under control within the organization.
Presumably, it's the same for Calgary. And while it looked like the games for Carolina, Boston and Vancouver were set to go ahead on Tuesday, the Hurricanes' game in Minnesota just got postponed as I was proofreading this.
And Jim Rutherford is set to speak with the media again via Zoom on Tuesday afternoon, at 12:30. So stay tuned...
In the release, the Canucks also mentioned that Travis Hamonic has been placed on long-term injured reserve and that Phil Di Giuseppe, a forward, has been recalled from Abbotsford.
For what it's worth, Di Giuseppe was originally drafted by the Carolina Hurricanes back in 2012 — when Jim Rutherford was still Carolina's GM. So we may be witnessing the Canucks' first Rutherford-induced roster tweak!
If you'd like to watch Rutherford's Monday press conference with Francesco Aquilini in its entirety, you can do that here:
There's lots of interesting stuff, but here's one Rutherford comment about roster composition that jumped out at me:
"What I'd like to see, and the team has done it, really, three out of the last four games, is starting to play quicker. You know, we don't have a fast team — or have a lot of fast skaters on it. That's really what I prefer. But if you don't have fast skaters, you have to be smart. You have to play quick. Front pressure, puck pressure, back pressure. Support your teammate when he's battling for a puck."
Di Giuseppe is a player who is known for his speed and his skill level. There may be room for him in the lineup with Lammikko on the sidelines. It'll be interesting to see how he gets incorporated.
While he's known for his willingness to swing trades, Rutherford is clearly well aware of the fact that the Canucks' current salary-cap situation limits his flexibility when it comes to making moves. And while he opened the presser by saying the Canucks are a better team than what they showed during the first 20 games of the season, he quickly followed up by adding, "there's work to be done here. There's holes in the lineup. There's areas that have to be worked on."
Change is coming, whether it's executed by Rutherford while he's serving as interim GM, or by the new, permanent general manager that he brings in.
He said he has a list of 40 potential candidates, and will take as long as is needed to make that hire. But he's hoping to have a new assistant general manager in the organization by the end of this week, presumably to help handle some of the workload of the departed Chris Gear, Jonathan Wall and John Weisbrod.
One area where Rutherford is happy is in the goaltending department.
"One of the really big pluses for us is, we have a franchise goalie," he said. "When you're trying to build a championship team, and you already have that piece in place, then you can start chipping away at things."
Nice timing, holding your first presser in your new position on the day that Thatcher Demko is named the NHL's first star of the week for his 4-0-0 performance, with a 1.62 goals-against average, .962 save percentage and one shutout.
Though they've tightened up somewhat defensively and have survived despite playing their last two games without Hamonic and Oliver Ekman-Larsson, the Canucks have still been outshot in all four of their games since Boudreau took over, although the margins have been relatively minor. Demko deserves massive credit for his contributions to last week's wins. I think even a self-aware Boudreau trotted out that old cliché, "Show me a good goaltender and I'll show you a good coach."
As for the Blue Jackets, they're on the second game of a five-game road trip that kicked off Saturday with a 5-4 overtime win over Seattle. Now that John Tortorella is gone, Blue Jackets games are a lot more entertaining than you might remember. On Saturday, they built a 4-1 lead before Seattle scored three goals to tie, then Jake Bean potted the game winner.
Sidelined with an oblique injury for the last month, Patrik Laine rejoined his team on Monday after also returning to Finland following the passing of his father. He's not expected to play on Tuesday. Columbus looks set to run the same lines as they used on Saturday in Seattle, including Elvis Merzlikins in net.
When the Canucks visited Columbus last month, Merzlikins got the better of them in a 4-2 win for the Blue Jackets.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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