Following practice this morning, the Canucks assigned defenceman Guillaume Brisebois to the Utica Comets

Brisebois appeared in two games with the Canucks over the past week and went minus three. He played 9:24 in his NHL debut against the Los Angeles Kings on Valentine’s Day and then played 7:00 against the San Jose Sharks on Saturday evening. The 2015 3rd round pick had been skating with Erik Gudbranson at this morning’s practice:

Generally, the Canucks management and coaching staff like to have at least seven defencemen on the roster and sending Brisebois down to Utica puts them down to six. The Comets don’t play until Friday and given that the Canucks host the Coyotes on Thursday night, it isn’t to ensure that Brisebois plays during this small break. At this moment, you’d assume that Luke Schenn would draw into the lineup for the Canucks, simply because they only have those six healthy defencemen, but there is no indication either way.

Furthermore, with Brisebois on the roster, the Canucks were at 23 players. So maybe they are expecting someone back from injury that they haven’t led on but with Chris Tanev not skating today and Alex Edler not expected for Thursday’s game, that doesn’t seem to be the case. If it was a forward coming back, the logical player to go back down is Zack MacEwen but they recalled Ryan Spooner earlier today and MacEwen was not sent back.

We’ll have to wait and see how the next couple of days play out to get a full understanding on why Brisebois was sent down now.