Elias Pettersson will miss tomorrow’s Canucks preseason game due to illness

Vancouver Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet told media that Elias Pettersson’s absence from Monday’s practice out at UBC was due to an illness. On Tuesday, Pettersson was once again not out on the ice for practice, and Tocchet went a step further and declared that Pettersson will miss tomorrow’s preseason game against the Seattle Kraken at the Abbotsford Centre.

“I’m not going to play him tomorrow,” said Tocchet. “That wouldn’t be fair because we don’t have a morning skate so he hopefully feels better and can have a sweat with the four guys that aren’t playing.”

This is undoubtedly tough news for Canucks fans out in the Fraser Valley and beyond who were hoping to see Pettersson in the Canucks’ near-opening night lineup. We saw last season how into it the fans out in the valley got when the Abbotsford Canucks went on their playoff run, and it’s a shame those same fans won’t be able to see the Canucks’ first line centre in action.

Instead, we can expect to see the Canucks lineup something like this, as these are the lines they rolled with on both Monday and Tuesday’s practices.

As mentioned, this lineup looks like what the Canucks will likely go with by opening night. Jack Studnicka is obviously the placeholder for Pettersson in these lines.

The Canucks also rolled out their Pettersson-less power play units, which appear as though they’ll feature two defencemen on the first unit:

Tocchet also offered an update on Ilya Mikheyev, who has been skating but not taking full part in line rushes lately.

“He’s in the pushing mode, he wants more now, so we’ll ramp it up. He’s tracking in the right direction… the [home] opener, I’m not sure about, but we’re going day by day with him with pushing and shoving. He’s got to get a little bit more — you know when there’s a lot of people around, where he’s got to change directions, get hit and stuff like that. That’s the next process for him.”

After tomorrow’s game against the Kraken, the Canucks will have one more preseason game against the Calgary Flames on Friday before kicking off their 2023-24 regular season with their home opener on Wednesday, October 11th against the Edmonton Oilers.