CanucksArmy GAMEDAY notebook: Looking for a bounce back against Winnipeg at home
2 years ago
For the first time in over 500 days, fans will fill the stands at Rogers Arena (at 50% capacity, of course.)
Season ticket holders eager to see their Vancouver Canucks back in action on home ice will get their chance to do so tonight.
Here is our game day notebook for tonight’s tilt against Winnipeg!
Opponent: Winnipeg Jets
Start time: 4 PM Pacific
NOTES:
- We saw a bit of a shakeup to the lines that have remained basically the same all throughout training camp and the preseason at yesterday’s practice. Here’s how the Canucks skated yesterday:
Here is the Canucks’ playing roster for today:
- Tonight is expected to be Jaroslav Halak’s first start as a Canuck, with Mike DiPietro backing up.
- No further updates were provided on the status of Brandon Sutter, Tyler Motte, or Travis Hamonic. However, head coach Travis Green did say that Brock Boeser would be out for “at least a week” after Friday night’s loss in Calgary. Boeser skated on Wednesday but wasn’t present at Thursday practice. The nature of his injury is not known at this time.
- Justin Bailey has arrived in Vancouver. He’s unlikely to play tonight, but after an untimely positive COVID-19 test result kept him out of training camp and the preseason up to this point, you know he’s eager to get back in the lineup.
“It’s unfortunate for Bails that he had to miss the start of camp,” said Green. “Hopefully we see him in a game or two. We’ll see how he is, how he feels, how he looks. Each guy that’s out and missing is different. Bails is a guy that had to come in and make the team and he knows that. He’s a hard worker, he’s in great shape. We’ll just have to take it day by day and see where he’s at because you can’t mimic the grind, the competitiveness or the speed of camp when you’re skating by yourself or with a group of guys that aren’t NHL players, and the same goes for the other two [Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes].”
- Nate Schmidt is not expected to suit up for the Jets tonight.
- Olli Juolevi looked better in Friday night’s game than he had previously. Obviously the bar is incredibly low, but it will be interesting to see how many more chances Juolevi gets to try to continue to trend in the right direction as the preseason continues along. He won’t be in the lineup tonight.
- The Canucks — namely Travis Green — were not happy with their performance on Friday. Sure, the Canucks certainly didn’t ice their best lineup, but it was a sloppy game from the Canucks in just about every area of the ice, and they’ll look to clean that up with a bounce back game tonight.
We will update this notebook as the day progresses and we get closer to puck drop!
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