Vancouver Canucks pregame: Jack Rathbone set to quarterback PP1 vs. Flames at home

It’s finally time for Canucks hockey!

And this time, we’re talking about real Canucks hockey in a game that doesn’t feature Canucks players on both sides.

Sunday marks the first two preseason games of the season as the Canucks are rolling out two squads to take on last year’s Pacific Division winners, the Calgary Flames.

The first game begins at 4 PM Pacific from Rogers Arena, and the second will begin at 5 PM Pacific from the Saddledome in Calgary.

Here are the two rosters the Canucks will be rolling with tonight. Note that these are listed in numerical order, and aren’t line combinations.

First, the roster staying in Vancouver:

And the roster suiting up in Calgary:

Having just concluded their third day of training camp in Whistler yesterday, the Canucks didn’t hold a morning skate in either city. Instead, head coach Bruce Boudreau met with the media and discussed a few interesting nuggets about tonight’s game(s).

The first, and arguably the biggest tidbit is that Jack Rathbone will be quarterbacking the Canucks’ first power play unit during their home game.

“With Rathbone, I haven’t seen him play,” explained Boudreau when asked what he wants to see from the young Rathbone tonight. “We could always look for another offensive defenceman, a guy that moves the puck quick, a guy that can skate. Rathbone’s got both of those qualities so we’d like to see a little bit of it. He’s going to get a chance on the first power play so we’ll see how he moves the puck and handles that situation.”

Rathbone is expected to be given plenty of opportunity to prove he belongs and could be a player that plays in almost every preseason game, just like he did last year when he made the Canucks out of camp before being sent down to Abbotsford a few months later.

We’ll have various forms of post game coverage tonight, including our analytics based post game “The Statchies”, which will be championed by Michael Liu.

For those wondering, “The Stanchies”, Wyatt Arndt’s new exclusive post game report for CanucksArmy, won’t debut until opening night of the regular season on October 12th in Edmonton.

See you after the game!