The forecast in Phoenix today calls for sunny skies and a high of 21 degrees. I bet the Vancouver Canucks are looking forward to getting on their plane and out of the rain to enjoy a little bit of desert warmth before they face off for their second game in less than a week against the Arizona Coyotes on Wednesday night.
One roster change yesterday, if you missed it:
Joseph LaBate will get a chance to make his NHL debut on Wednesday thanks to Derek Dorsett's shoulder injury. Dorsett was placed on injured reserve on Monday; no word yet on a timeline for his potential return.
LaBate is the big 23-year-old who impressed during training camp with his physical play and his willingness to go to the net. He has two goals and six points in 12 games with Utica this year, to go along with a team-leading 34 penalty minutes. He also served a three-game suspension earlier this season as punishment for an illegal check to the head during a game in late October.
I'm happy to see LaBate get an opportunity that he has earned and am glad that the Canucks now seem committed to leaving Jake Virtanen in Utica for the foreseeable future.
The other big news of the day will come at 6 p.m., when the Las Vegas team finally unveils its name and logo:
Here's what you might expect to hear:
Of course, with the Vegas franchise one step closer to becoming reality, that stirs up thoughts of the expansion draft once again.
Click here to take a look at a full expansion draft mockup by Craig Button of TSN. He puts a premium on defensemen for the new team, since he believes they're the most tradable asset. That means he thinks Luca Sbisa will likely be the Canucks player that is targeted.
Sbisa needs to play 10 more games this season in order to qualify as an 'experienced' defenseman who can be exposed. Per
CapFriendly, the Canucks will also need to expose one goaltender—almost certainly, Richard Bachman—and two forwards who, like Sbisa, are under contract and meet the experience threshold of 70 games played over the last two seasons or 40 games this season.
The Canucks are expected to protect seven forwards and three defensemen, and three of those forward spots will be taken up by the Sedins and Loui Eriksson, who all have no-movement clauses.
So, they'll be able to protect four forwards from this list:
Brandon Sutter
Derek Dorsett
Jannik Hansen
Sven Baertschi
Anton Rodin
Markus Granlund
Bo Horvat
Brendan Gaunce
I'd say that Sutter, Hansen and Horvat are the untouchables. And right now, Markus Granlund is making a pretty good case for himself to be the seventh protected forward.
That'd leave Dorsett, Baertschi, Rodin and Gaunce exposed—and Dorsett and Baertschi have already played enough games to satisfy the experience requirement. Would those players bring less to the table for Vegas than Sbisa? I guess it depends on whether Button's suppositions line up with the player personnel philosophies that the Vegas group will have in place.
Of course, lots can still happen between now and expansion draft day. If the Canucks are out of the playoff picture, it could make sense to open up one more spot on the protected list by trading a valuable player like Hansen to a contender in exchange for a draft pick and/or a young player that wouldn't need to be protected.
Over at ESPN,
Pierre LeBrun picks Anaheim, Chicago, Detroit and Montreal as the teams that will need to do some wheeling and dealing if they don't want to lose an important player.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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