Photo Credit: Anne-Marie Sorvin/USA TODAY Sports

The Vancouver Canucks figuratively limped back from their season-long seven game road trip this week. Actually they literally limped back too, as the club will be without a handful of key contributors when they host the reigning Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday night.

Radim Vrbata will not play, the club announced on Saturday. And though fourth-line winger Brandon Prust will return, Brandon Sutter remains sidelined and Ben Hutton is similarly on the limp. Vrbata will join Sutter and Hutton on the sidelines on Saturday night. 

So the Canucks will be missing their most effective volume shooter, their best offensive defenseman, and their best defensive centreman on Saturday night. Ouch.

Hutton has been Vancouver’s most productive 5-on-5 defenseman offensively speaking, and based on the recall of Tyler Fedun, it seems possible that Hutton may be out for a while. The 22-year-old defender has been an enormously pleasant surprise and has been a key reason for the club’s much improved play in the neutral zone.

Sutter, meanwhile, has been missed enormously on the penalty kill. With Bo Horvat struggling in a secondary role, Sutter’s return to the lineup can’t come soon enough.

And finally, though Vrbata has been snake bit in the extreme this season, he’s remained an elite volume shooter. He’s also a competent two-way winger, so the impact of his loss shouldn’t be understated, what with the Canucks breaking in a variety of younger players this season. 

The hope when Vrbata returns from what is reportedly a groin injury will be that his hobbled status won’t impact his ability to bounce back from a nightmare start to the season.

In Vrbata’s absence the onus will be on the Sedin line to carry the water offensively, and the club’s young players – wingers Sven Baertschi and Jake Virtanen in particular – to step up.