The Vancouver Canucks have recalled six players from AHL Abbotsford to suit up for tonight’s preseason game against the Seattle Kraken out at the Abbotsford Centre.
As we wrote earlier today, tonight’s game won’t be televised, but the Canucks are planning on streaming the game on their website. Sportsnet 650’s Brendan Batchelor and Dan Riccio will have the call of the game.
Whether you’re going to the game or watching it online, you can expect to see a lineup that isn’t quite what we were expecting. Initially, head coach Rick Tocchet said the Canucks’ plan was to roll with a near-NHL lineup for games four through six of the preseason, and we saw that on game four with the Canucks’ lineup Saturday vs. the Calgary Flames.
Additionally, the Canucks’ practice lines on Monday and Tuesday indicated that the team was going to line up something like this tonight:
Tocchet declared Tuesday that Elias Pettersson would be absent from tonight’s game due to an illness that kept him off the ice on both Monday and Tuesday, but that was expected to be the Canucks’ only NHL-regular absence tonight.
Abbotsford Canucks training camp opened today out in Chilliwack, and the Canucks released their full roster for that camp yesterday. Headlined by names like Vasily Podkolzin, Aidan McDonough, and Akito Hirose, the baby Nucks will be looking to build off of where they left off last season when the Calgary Wranglers eliminated them in the second round of the Calder Cup Playoffs.
Sportsnet’s Iain MacIntyre reported that Quinn Hughes, Ian Cole, Noah Juulsen, JT Miller, Teddy Blueger, Phil DiGiuseppe, Conor Garland, Ilya Mikeheyev, and Thatcher Demko were all out on the ice for a skate out at UBC this morning, indicating that they will not play tonight.
As such, it now looks like the Canucks will line up something like this tonight (this is just a guess and simply features the players we expect to see on their playing roster tonight):
Beauvillier-Studnicka-Kuzmenko
Joshua-Suter-Boeser
Åman/Bains-Blueger-Höglander
Max Sasson-Aatu Räty-Linus Karlsson
Soucy-Hronek
Cole-Myers
Wolanin/Brisebois-McWard/Johansson
Get your tickets for the CanucksArmy Kick-Off Party when we will all get together at Greta Bar YVR to watch the Canucks take on the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday, October 14th!