How Carson Soucy’s absence affects the Vancouver Canucks’ defence to open the season: Canucks Conversation

On Tuesday’s episode of Canucks Conversation, Harman Dayal filled in for the recently-married Chris Faber as Harm and Quads recapped the busy weekend in Canucksland.

This mainly included their reactions to the Conor Garland trade rumours from earlier today, a brief chat about the Sam Lafferty trade, and more! The Lafferty trade was the subject of our Atlas Goods poll question, as the guys tried to gauge the fanbase’s feelings toward the trade that saw the Canucks give up a 2024 5th round pick:

As you can see above, the overwhelming majority of fans said they think the Lafferty trade is a good one, and Quads echoed that same belief when he and Harman briefly talked about the trade.

Later, the guys discussed how Carson Soucy’s absence could affect the Canucks’ defence corps moving forward, as the towering blue liner is out “week-to-week” as the Canucks get set to kick off the regular season tomorrow night. Thankfully, he did skate on his own today, but the Canucks will be starting their season without one of their key offseason additions.

“There’s still some moving parts because the Canucks only skated with five defenceman at practice, so presumably before the game tomorrow, there’s still going to be some roster juggling, perhaps an emergency recall for somebody like Akito Hirose,” said Dayal.

“But look, in the big picture, this is the first big test of this team’s blue line depth because yeah, it’s unfortunate to lose Soiucy early in the year especially with a tough schedule, you’re on the road, so you’re not going to be able to dictate the matchups in terms of having last change. But it’s inevitable that over the course of the season, you’re going to run into a lot of injuries, and you’re going to be leaning on your Akito Hirose’s, your Noah Juulsens, Cole McWards, Guillaume Brisebois, Christian Wolanins, that tier of defenceman.

“Down the stretch last year, that tier of defenceman, all of them looked pretty good. We looked at it and went ‘wow!’ especially since it happened under Tocchet, in the last 30 games, you’re going ‘man, this could be different’, and you maybe don’t worry about it as much if this team runs into blue line injuries, especially at the bottom of the lineup. But the fact of the matter is through training camp and preseason, it’s been a little bit shakier and I’ve been a little bit unimpressed with the fact that whether it’s Wolanin or Juulsen, that tier of defenceman, a couple of those guys I expected a little bit more from.

“But we’ll see. If they fare at the level they did last season, like, if Hirose comes in and plays like he did in the four or five games that he got into, then you’re not really worried about weathering a short-term Soucy injury, especially because the way Tocchet has been rolling his D pairs through camp and preseason, it’s not as if they had been using Soucy exclusively next to Hughes, he’s playing in the top four, and now you’ve got this huge hole next to Hughes. Soucy looked as if he could be starting on a third pair, and from that standpoint, if you get that version of Hirose or whoever is called up, then you’re fine, but I’m a little bit nervous overall about the state of the club’s blue line depth.”

Watch the full clip below!

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