Our lull in hockey-land has gone by pretty quickly, if you ask me.
The Vancouver Canucks are practicing out at UBC today, then will hop on the plane to Edmonton tomorrow to take on the Oilers at Rexall Place.
The big news out of Monday's practice was the lineup tweaks that Willie Desjardins will institute. Jim Jamieson of
The Province is reporting that Sbisa will be back in the lineup on Wednesday after twisting his ankle during the loss to the Los Angeles Kings on November 8, while Linden Vey looks like he'll be a healthy scratch as Zack Kassian returns to action from his knee injury.
Kassian offers some pretty thoughtful responses as he talks about getting back into the lineup. He sounds like he's pretty happy on his line with Shawn Matthias and Brad Richardson:
If Vey sits, that means Bo Horvat will most likely draw back into the lineup—he was scratched in the 5-0 loss against Arizona and it could be argued that the Canucks missed him.
"We’ll evaluate," Canucks coach Willie Desjardins told Jamieson. "I like Horvat at centre and if he’s at centre, then we’ve got to move somebody out. Kassian is coming back, so I probably want to get him in and get him going."
Bo just might be winning himself a job in the faceoff circle. He leads the Canucks in an area where they're weak, with a 53.8 success rate, while Vey is just 39.6 percent.
It was actually Nick Bonino who got hammered in the circle against Arizona last week, winning just 27 percent of his draws and most notably losing the faceoff to Martin Hanzal on the backbreaking third goal that came just nine seconds after the goal that he may have knocked in with a high stick.
Vey wasn't much better though, with a 36 percent success rate. In a fourth-line role, it'd be nice to see better puck control.
Vey's also failing to contribute on the power play, which now hasn't scored in four games.
Eric MacKenzie of
24 Hours is reporting that Yannick Weber practiced in Vey's spot on the power play on Monday. I assumed he'd be the player to come out of the lineup for Sbisa, but Jamieson says "it looks like Ryan Stanton could be the odd man out on the back end. Desjardins said he’ll make the decision Wednesday in Edmonton."
The Canucks have given up 14 goals in their last four games. Stanton was even in plus-minus for the wins in Anaheim and Ottawa but a minus-two against the Kings and a minus-one against the Coyotes—where he played just 13:05, a season-low other than the October game against Edmonton where he was injured.
On the whole, I think Stanton's a pretty steady defender who has been showing more of a physical side. I'll be curious to see if Willie can do better with his more enigmatic Swiss blueline pairing.
Utica Comets Are First Overall
If the progress of the Canucks' farm team is any indication, the team's future looks very bright indeed.
In just their second season of existence, the Utica Comets have climbed from the AHL outhouse to the penthouse: they're now first in the entire league with an 11-2-2 record through 15 games.
"On November 18th of last year, the Comets sat dead last in the league with a record of 2-10-1-1, and just six points," reports
Mark Caswell, Jr. in a good article on the AHL website.
Click here for the Comets' latest roster moves, which includes Curtis Valk's return to Kalamazoo of the ECHL.
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