Photo Credit: Perry Nelson/USA TODAY Sports

In the club’s final preseason tuneup game ahead of Wednesday’s regular season opener, the Vancouver Canucks are rolling out their forward lines in a way that may have been inspired by an acid trip.

Sutter on the wing? McCann with veteran wingers? Horvat in the top-six? What’s going on…

“We’re still going to try a few things on Saturday,” Canucks coach Willie Desjardins cautioned following the club’s convincing preseason victory over Edmonton on Thursday, “but we’ve got to be ready for our early opener.”

This would seem to be the club trying more than a few things. Let’s get into it a bit further on the other side of the jump.

As interesting as it is to see the club try to build off of the chemistry that Bo Horvat and Sven Baertschi found playing together on Thursday, and as curious as we are to see what McCann is capable of centring a top-nine line flanked by two extremely capable two-way wingers, the thing that stands out has to be Sutter playing on the wing. 

As far as I can tell, Sutter hasn’t ever played the wing for a prolonged period in the NHL. Dating back to his first full NHL campaign in 2009-10, Sutter has finished second on his team in faceoffs taken, a strong indication that he’s been a full-time pivot throughout his NHL career. 

Looking over his most frequent linemates over the past five seasons suggests a similar conclusion. Though Sutter has played with some credible centremen – Tyler Kennedy, Jiri Tlusty, Joe Vitale etc. – those players are all far more likely to have been deployed on the wing than Sutter. Same goes for Evgeni Malkin, with whom Sutter shared the ice for about 200 5-on-5 minutes during his three Penguins campaigns.

The only centre Sutter has played with since 2009 whom I’m confident wasn’t bumped on the wing when the two were used together is Sidney Crosby. Crosby and Sutter shared the ice at evens for about 56 minutes during Sutter’s Penguins tenure, and I’d imagine most of those were situational defensive minutes (when a coach sends out two centremen for a late defensive-zone shift as insurance in case one gets waved out, or whatever).

Because we don’t have any track record with which to judge Sutter’s suitability on the wing, we’ll reserve judgement on this particular experiment. Considering how tough goals have been to come by for the club this preseason, it does seem odd that the twins will have spent preseason stints playing with the likes of Ronalds Kenins, Alexandre Grenier and Brandon Sutter at 5-on-5, without having so much as a single catch up session with Vrbata…

For both McCann and Horvat, I’d think this is a last opportunity for the club to give the two young centremen a risk-free look playing one notch further up the lineup than they’ll be expected to occupy during the regular season. If McCann makes the team, and it looks increasingly like he will, I’d think he’s going to occupy the fourth-line centre, second-unit power play slot that Jim Benning has described on multiple occasions during training camp, but it’ll be interesting to see how he fares in a larger role with quality veteran linemates. 

With Horvat, the club has insisted for months that they want to make sure he’s not in a position where he’s ‘counted on’ to produce offense, but based on the way he’s dominated the preseason, I’d think it might prove difficult to keep him out of a secondary role…

As for Vey and Dorsett, I wouldn’t read much into them being out of the lineup. Both played in Edmonton, and have been in a good number of preseason games, and in all likelihood their being scratched reflects their respective status as ‘known quantities who are on the team’. Vey’s status could perhaps be more interesting, but even if the club opts to use McCann as their fourth-line centre on opening night, they have the space to keep him, McCann and Virtanen on the roster without exposing any significant assets to the waiver wire.

And on defense, the club will use a lefty-heavy defense corps, as both Frank Corrado and Yannick Weber get the night off:

There isn’t too much to takeaway from these combos I don’t think. Yes Alex Edler and Chris Tanev will be the club’s first pair this season, and Dan Hamhuis and Matt Bartkowski fared well together on Thursday night in Edmonton and Benning telegraphed them as potential defensive partners way back during the Young Stars tournament. Ben Hutton will get one more look, and on a pair with Luca Sbisa, but surely the club isn’t seriously considering deploying their defense corps like this in the season opener (Weber’s point shot is too crucial to the first power-play unit, surely).

And finally I don’t think we should read too much into Corrado being scratched for the final preseason game, even if he’s seemed to be a possible surprise cut throughout camp. The way this lineup looks it sure seems like the Canucks are giving a handful of players who are on the bubble one last shot to impress. So Corrado being out of the lineup would suggest to me that he’s not going to be exposed to the waiver wire and will begin the season with the big club, albeit in a depth role.

So it seems like this will be a big night for McCann, for Horvat, for Hutton, and for Cracknell in particular. It should be fascinating.