Thursday April 4 - Vancouver Canucks at Nashville Predators - 5 p.m. - Sportsnet Pacific, Sportsnet 650
Vancouver Canucks: 80 GP, 35-35-10, 80 pts, fifth in Pacific Division
Nashville Predators: 80 GP, 45-29-6, 96 pts, second in Central Division
The Vancouver Canucks will debut their 43rd different player when they take to the ice to kick off their season-ending two-game road trip against the Nashville Predators on Tuesday.
New college free-agent signing Brogan Rafferty is expected to draw into the lineup on defense.
Rafferty, a right shot, will sub in for Alex Biega, which will lead to a bit of a shuffling of the Canucks' defense pairings.
A naive of West Dundee, Illinois, Rafferty turns 24 in May and just completed his junior year at Quinnipiac University. According to the profile that Ryan Biech put together for
Canucks.com, Rafferty started his hockey career as a forward, then switched to defense during his senior year of high school. Rafferty also had a late growth spurt, shooting up at age 16—although we're not exactly sure how far. He's currently listed at 6'0" and 195 pounds on Hockey DB and the Canucks' website, 6'1" and 191 pounds on the Quinnipiac hockey roster page, and 6'2" 188 over at Elite Prospects.
Rafferty's skillset revolves around his skating and his offensive instincts. He had 4-20-24 in 38 games with Quinnipiac this year, with three of those goals coming on the power play.
Brogan's path to the NHL has seen him overcome some unusual obstacles. Bet you can't resist clicking after reading this teaser for an article from his freshman college season!
Like fellow defensive free-agent signing Josh Teves, Rafferty is on a one-year entry-level contract because of his age, which will make him a restricted free agent at the end of this season. Both players will be waiver exempt next year, so they should help add some much-needed blue line depth in Utica.
On Monday, the Canucks also signed NCAA goaltender Jake Kielly out of Clarkson University. He's on the road trip with the team but is not expected to see action before the end of the season.
Because he's 22, the entry-level contract for the Minnesota native will run for two years.
Kielly is consistently listed at 6'2" and 202 pounds, and backstopped Clarkson to an ECAC championship last month, but his team was knocked out of the NCAA tournament in the first round by Notre Dame. With a record of 26-11-2 this season, a .929 save percentage and a 1.91 goals-against average, he's also a finalist for the
Mike Richter Award, which will be presented on April 12 to the best goaltender in college hockey.
Before starting college, Kielly won a Clark Cup with the Tri-City Storm of the USHL.
Now—back to today's game.
If the Canucks extend their winning streak to four games tonight, it'll be their longest of the season. They've gone 3-0-0 since Quinn Hughes got into the lineup last week. Vancouver is 1-0-1 against the Predators so far this season, winning 5-3 in Vancouver and dropping a 4-3 overtime decision in Nashville in a pair of games played just a week apart back in December.
Jake Virtanen returns to the Canucks lineup after missing the last two games with a lower-body injury, and Jacob Markstrom returns to the net after a night off against the Sharks on Tuesday.
Here's how Peter Laviolette is expected to run his forward lines:
Pekka Rinne is expected to get the nod in net.
The Preds will have plenty to play for on Thursday, with playoff positioning in the Central still completely up in the air. The top three teams all have two games left to play. Winnipeg and Nashville are tied with 96 points and St. Louis is just one point back at 95. Dallas sits in the first wild-card spot with 91. It looks like they'd hold the tiebreaker if they won both of their last two games and the Blues lost both of theirs, so the Stars also still have an outside shot of further disrupting the mix.
With that, you're up to date. Enjoy the game!
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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