The Vancouver Canucks were back on the practice ice at Rogers Arena on Wednesday ahead of a team flight to San Jose. Between game days, travelling home from Dallas on Saturday, and a team day off on Monday, this was the club’s first full practice with all of its new players. The Canucks made a couple of changes from the lineup they used to blank Colorado 3-0 on Tuesday.

What we saw

Earlier in the day, Nils Aman was summoned from Abbotsford to replace Linus Karlsson. Aman was in the Canucks October 9th opening night lineup and has played five games for the team this season but none since November 9th. He skated on the right wing with Teddy Blueger and Nils Höglander at practice and is likely to remain there for Thursday’s game against the Sharks. The Canucks have just 12 healthy forwards on the active roster.
Filip Chytil lined up as part of the Canucks first power play unit at the end of today’s session. He was promoted to the first group during last night’s game against the Avalanche. With Chytil patrolling the left half wall on a unit that also included Filip Hronek and forwards Elias Pettersson, Brock Boeser and Jake DeBrusk, Conor Garland was bumped to the team’s second power play grouping.
Quinn Hughes was not involved in practice and will not travel with the team to San Jose. So the Canucks will be without their captain for a third straight game. Based on practice pairings, the defence corps will remain intact. That means blueliner Elias Pettersson is expected to suit up again and play his fifth NHL game. The team is 3-0-1 with the young Swede in the lineup. As he did in Tuesday’s win, Pettersson skated with Carson Soucy on his right during practice. Noah Juulsen and newcomer Victor Mancini were the extra pair on the ice today.
A couple hundred fans were in the stands to take in today’s proceedings. They were clients and customers of one of the team’s largest corporate partners. Rick Tocchet and Adam Foote conducted a brief question-and-answer session with the spectators before getting down to the business of putting their players through drills.
Today’s practice also included Canucks players being forced to sprint between the bluelines. As the video below shows, even goalies Thatcher Demko and Kevin Lankinen were involved. And who doesn’t enjoy watching goalies in full gear go all out?

What we heard

Rick Tocchet on finally getting a practice with all of the new faces on the roster after Friday’s trades: “The last three or four days there is definitely a nice energy in there (locker room). When you bring in four or five guys, there is a new energy. The one thing I can tell you is they want to be coached. And that’s nice.”
Tocchet on swapping in Nils Aman for Linus Karlsson: “I like having that extra centreman. Ams has played really well. It has nothing to do with Karlsson. He could be up in the next couple of days. It’s just being able to get a guy to practice with us, I like that. Patrik likes that. Jim likes that. It’s no indictment. I think Karly’s game has been coming. I think it’s important that we can rotate a couple of guys. That’s the way we feel.”
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