Well, we’ve made it. The Vancouver Canucks’ preseason kicks off tonight in Rogers Arena against the Seattle Kraken.

Tonight’s game will feature forwards Brock Boeser, Jonathan Lekkerimäki, Nils Höglander and Conor Garland, defenceman Filip Hronek, Tyler Myers and Elias Pettersson, with Arturs Silovs getting the nod in goal.

Sportsnet’s Brendan Batchelor gives us the line configurations from morning skate ahead of the club’s preseason opener.

Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet met with the media after morning skate to discuss what he’s looking for out of his group tonight.

“I’m just looking for the stuff that we practiced in the game tonight. I think that’s what coaches are looking for. Use those elements in the game tonight.”

Tocchet brought in some new systems during training camp that he wanted to introduce, hoping they would improve Vancouver’s offensive production for this upcoming season.

“It’s not like brain surgery or we’re trying to reinvent the wheel, but there are stuff that, I think especially off the rush or off our breakouts, where we can attack better,” Tocchet explained as an area for the team to work on. “I think we’ve done a good dive into it. We got some good video for the players. We got some good drills. I don’t want to bore you guys in exactly what it is, but a lot of times we’re not getting the puck in the middle enough, and we’re only having a certain chunk of players middle driving enough.”

The 2023-24 Jack Adams Award winner discussed last season’s struggles producing off the rush and why that may have been.

“Our breakouts are really good, it’s just that sometimes we break out and we’re ahead of everybody, but somehow the other team catches up. I don’t think it’s the other team’s faster, I think sometimes we play a little bit safer. Guys are just content to chip in a puck. and because we are one of the best teams forechecking teams, especially on the same side ship, but I think there’s more weak side plays for us, and I think that’s on me to get the players to do that.”

Diving into last season’s stats, Tocchet is spot on regarding rush attempts. Rush attempts, a stat provided by Natural Stat Trick, are defined as “Any rush shot attempt (goals, shots on net, misses, and blocks) by the player, outside of the shootout.”

At 5-on-5 last season, Nathan MacKinnon and Owen Tippett led the way in rush chances with 27 each. You’ll have to scroll all the way down to the 38th forward to find your first Vancouver Canuck, Conor Garland, who had 12.

Garland was the only Canuck to finish with double-digit rush attempts last season, with JT Miller, Ilya Mikheyev, Sam Lafferty and Teddy Blueger all with nine.

So no surprise that Tocchet and the Canucks are working on trying to strengthen that area. Even before training camp started, the Canucks made progress in improving this weakness this offseason with a few of their winger signings.

Here are the four wingers the Canucks brought in this offseason and what percentile they rank in across the league in total speed bursts of 20+ MPH and total 5-on-5 rush attempts they had in 2023-24.

As you can see, all of the wingers ranked in the top half of the league in speed bursts, and all finished ahead of every Canuck player outside of Conor Garland.

The Canucks should showcase what they’ve been building and working towards this offseason and training camp starting tonight in preseason Game 1 against the Seattle Kraken.