The Canucks were back on the ice Monday afternoon and CanucksArmy was in the building to report on the second camp of the season.

The first thing that all the reporters were racing to was the line combinations. As per usual, Sportsnet650’s radio play by play man Brendan Batchelor was first on the case.

Initial thoughts on the lines were that the fourth line looked to set with Tyler Motte and Brandon Sutter flanking the wings while Jay Beagle held down the centre position.

Some Canucks fans were hoping to see a Zack MacEwen sighting on the fourth line but more on MacEwen later as David Quadrelli reported on the situation.

The top six looks to have Brock Boeser on the Bo Horvat line, which suggests that the coaching staff is deciding to go with the hot hand, (if you can still call it that 100+ days later) as Tyler Toffoli will link up with JT Miller and Elias Pettersson on the first scoring line. Toffoli’s goals were set up by Miller (3) and Pettersson (1) for a total of four primary assists in the small 10 game sample that we saw before the season came to a screeching halt.

Boeser and Pettersson obviously had chemistry throughout the season and that’s why the lotto line was so effective — Pettersson had seven primary assists on Brock Boeser goals this season. The seven primary assists to Boeser were the most Pettersson had to any teammate this season.

The third line looked to be Antoine Roussel, Adam Gaudette and Jake Virtanen, with Loui Eriksson spelling off Roussel at times. This looks to be good news for the “anti-Eriksson crowd” which is almost as big as the “I hope the Canucks win this play-in series crowd”.

Eriksson and MacEwen look to be the odd men out for the forward group as both were getting time with different lines, notably Zack MacEwen getting some time in Toffoli’s spot with Pettersson and Miller.

It seems like the Canucks’ brass seems to have high hopes for MacEwen as they have used him in a top-six role in the past, typically alongside Horvat. But now that he’s getting a chance to skate with the Canucks top two scorers it does make you believe he could be a guy who moves up in the lineup if an injury were to occur.

In other news, Tyler Motte took a bump from Jordie Benn in practice and bounced back, the first cut is the deepest, baby I know.

The big news of the morning was that Micheal Ferland was deemed “unfit to play”. More on this story later today.

The defence corps looks the same way as many predicted; you will see a heavy dose of the Canucks’ top four defencemen with Quinn Hughes paired with Chris Tanev and Alex Edler playing alongside Tyler Myers over the next two weeks.

The bottom pairing has Oscar Fantenberg with Troy Stecher while Jordie Benn and Jalen Chatfield played as the fourth pairing. Which is a great name for a hockey podcast by the way.

Notably not with the first group was AHL all-star defenceman Brogan Rafferty.

Rafferty was not called up to the NHL all season but did show the organization that he deserves to be given a shot. The organization clearly likes the defensive game of Chatfield as he is a sound stay at home defenceman who has been with the organization since 2017.

Chatfield may be a better defensive defenceman but looking at who can be a better contributor at the NHL level, I tend to lean towards Rafferty making a bigger impact. He can move the puck better, skates better and though some may knock his defensive game, I’d bet that those knocking his defensive game haven’t watched him play because he is definitely above average in that aspect of his game too.

We will see if Rafferty can work his way into the first group as camp goes on but it was a tad bit surprising to see Chatfield in that position over him on day one.

For the second time this season, CanucksArmy is very thankful for the media access granted by the Vancouver Canucks organization and we hope to be able to bring this type of coverage in the future.

Follow along with David Quadrelli and me, Chris Faber, on Twitter for more training camp updates as the weeks go on.