A full recap of day one of Canucks training camp

The Vancouver Canucks kicked off their second training camp of the 2019-20 season today, and CanucksArmy is ready to bring you the top stories for the entirety of it. Here’s what went down today.

The biggest news of the day came at 10:59 AM when the team announced that forward Micheal Ferland was unfit to play. This is concerning for a myriad of reasons given Ferland’s well-documented concussion history — along with the obvious fear of someone contracting Covid-19.

General Manager Jim Benning spoke with media at 12:30 but informed us that we’d have to get used to hearing the term “unfit to play” in compliance with the NHL’s Phase 3 and 4 injury update protocols.

What Benning did say, however, was that there was no reason to be alarmed about Ferland’s absence, which leads one to believe that his absence isn’t related to his past history with concussion problems, which sidelined him for most of this season.

Jim Benning seemed especially irritated when he was asked to comment on the notion that the organization was open to trading forward Brock Boeser. Benning said there were no truth to those rumours and doubled down by saying he has no intention of trading Boeser.

Benning added that it’s not easy to add natural goal scorers like Boeser to a team, and that he has no interest in moving him. Breathe that sigh of relief, Canucks fans.

Boeser was asked about the trade rumours as well, and said he wasn’t too pleased with the report either.

Boeser also added that he spoke with Jim Benning who reaffirmed that he had no intention of trading him.

Boeser says he’s feeling good both mentally and physically and can’t wait to get going in the play-in series vs. the Wild.

After the events of the last few training camps, Dan Murphy and Brendan Batchelor, and really, all of us, were on #PukeWatch after Troy Stecher participated in the team bag skate toward the end of practice.

It looked like it might happen, however, it was just not meant to be:

Brock Boeser and Zack MacEwen rotated in and out of the right-wing spot on Bo Horvat’s line during line rushes and drills, and MacEwen even saw multiple instances playing with Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller. Considering he played with Horvat at times prior to the season being paused, we could see him slide into the top six during the play-in series in the event of an injury.

During the first training camp, there were times where Olli Juolevi was labouring on his knee and even struggled to participate in some of the lower body stretches with his teammates.

Today, however, Juolevi was joined by his Utica Comets teammates for the Canucks’ Black Aces group practice. He lined up alongside Brogan Rafferty and was skating hard with no issues. The Black Aces group wasn’t forced to bag skate like the main group, but for Juolevi, so far so good.