Scenes from morning skate in Colorado: Jack Rathbone slots back into the lineup, Demko starts

The Vancouver Canucks are in Colorado for the first game of a three-game road trip before returning back home on November 17th.

Tonight, the Canucks will face off against the Avalanche and look to get off on the right foot after a disappointing overtime loss at the hands of the Anaheim Ducks on Tuesday.

Here’s what went down at morning skate today.

The Canucks have played well at 5-on-5 recently, so it should come as no surprise that their lineup remains relatively unchanged.

The big change is that Jack Rathbone — who was called up from Abbotsford after a short stint with the AHL Canucks — slots back into the lineup tonight.

With Luke Schenn hurt, this is a golden opportunity for Rathbone to remind everyone why he made the NHL team out of camp with a strong showing on this road trip.

Travis Green confirmed that Thatcher Demko will start in goal for the Canucks tonight.

Green also talked about getting Rathbone back into his lineup.

“It was good for him to get some minutes and some playing time,” said Green when asked about Rathbone’s short AHL stint. “Get a player feeling good about his game — I don’t ever worry about his confidence, Jack’s a confident guy. Obivously with a couple of defencemen out he’ll be excited to be back in. We’ve talked a lot about him a lot throughout preseason and his camp. We think he’s a young defenceman capable of playing in the NHL. Like a lot of young D, there’s things he needs to work on, and he’s a smart guy — when I talk about him, I say a lot of the same things about Podkolzin.”

Tyler Myers says the Canucks are well aware that they played a much better brand of hockey in the second half of their homestand, and that they need to keep it going if they want to start getting results.

In order to get those results, however, the penalty kill will need to be much better.

“Obviously it hasn’t gone very well to start the year here,” said Myers. “Guys are working hard to turn things around, and it will turn for us, we just need to make sure we have a consistent mindset going into each game — into each kill. We gotta start turning the ship here on our PK. Guys are working, and I’m confident we’ll get it going.”

Puck drop is at 6 PM Pacific tonight from Ball Arena in Colorado.