Welcome back to another edition of Scenes from skate — the column here at CanucksArmy where we bring you wall-to-wall coverage of every Vancouver Canucks game day skate and practice all season long. Today, we’re doing things a bit different and will be bringing you a live edition for day two of Canucks training camp. To read out full recap from day one of Canucks camp, click here!
Because this is a live edition, we will do two “what we saw” sections and two “what was said” sections. If you have any questions for the players in Group A, let us know who you want to hear from in the comments section below!
Let’s get into it!

What we saw (from Group B)

Before anyone came out, Ian Clark and Marko Torenius got to work with Casey DeSmith, Arturs Silovs, and Spencer Martin. Henrik Sedin, Daniel Sedin, and Mikael Samuelsson served as the shooters, and although you can’t tell from this particular video, those three would still form a pretty decent power play forward group.
Today, group B is skating first, and group C is skating off-site once again, so unfortunately, we won’t be able to give you coverage of their skate. Here are the groups:
And here are the actual line rushes we saw from group B:
Rick Tocchet told us not to read too much into the lines and defence pairings we saw, but the only change we’ve seen today is that Quinn Hughes is playing with Carson Soucy. This is especially interesting given that Rick Tocchet told us yesterday that while he doesn’t always think you need a right-shot and left-shot together on defence, he does think it’s sometimes beneficial given the way Hughes plays. Our guess is that Tocchet wants a few guys to get a look with Hughes, and it will be interesting to hear what he has to say about it when we talk to him soon.
The key NHL forward lines at the top remain unchanged, and Arshdeep Bains is being given another shot alongside Pius Suter and Conor Garland. The group began with some 2-on-1 drills and continued a lot of the “educational” work on systems they did on day one.
The drills are starting to increase in intensity!
To wrap up Group B’s session, Rick Tocchet stayed out late with Vasily Podkolzin while Sergei Gonchar went over some things with Quinn Hughes. We are heading down for media now!

What was said (by Group B)

Vasily Podkolzin was asked to talk about his relationship with JT Miller after Miller spoke about how he has been mentoring the 22-year-old Russian in both hockey and life.
“We’ve got a great relationship and if I have any problems I can call him and ask for advice,” said Podkolzin. “He’s told me his story and that’s what I want to learn from him. He’s had a hard way and a long way [to the NHL] but again, he just tells me to be confident, keep working, and keep smiling.”
When asked if Miller has given him any advice about being a young father, Podkolzin laughed and said, “Yeah, he said it’s crazy. But that’s part of life, probably the best part of life and I’m really happy.”

What we saw (from Group A)

Vilmer Alriksson and Kirill Kudryavtsev were moved up to group A with the regular pro players while Hunter Brzustewicz was moved down to Group C (who, again, skated off-site).
For the second day in a row, Ian Cole and Filip Hronek were paired together. Guillaume Brisebois left the session halfway through, and we will be sure to get an update from Rick Tocchet.
Much like group B before them, there wasn’t much to talk about from the sessions, aside from the fact that there was a LOT of teaching going on. The team worked a ton on defensive zone positioning, breakouts, and moving the puck up ice in a hurry. Adam Foote was very involved in a lot of these drills.
Andrei Kuzmenko led the stretch to close out Group A’s session, and we’re going to be heading down to speak with Rick Tocchet to wrap up day two!

What was said (by group A)

Andrei Kuzmenko‘s media availability was absolute gold, and as such, we’re going to write an entire article recapping it, so keep on the lookout for that soon!
Rick Tocchet spoke about the focus on day two: breakouts and the neutral zone forecheck.
“When you have a lot of bodies, you know, especially in the neutral zone — it could just take one guy to go to the wrong spot, so you got to be careful that you don’t over criticize people because you know, some guys are not used to the system. So we’ll probably dive in even more as we get less bodies, but that’s the hard part because you can’t have 50-60 guys and not everybody knows the system or knows where to go sometimes, so it could screw the drill up.”
Tocchet touched on putting Carson Soucy with Quinn Hughes and talked about how everybody wants to play with Hughes.
“I just wanted to switch it around, just kind of a different by committee, give it a look type of thing. But, you know, we’ll see how it goes from there. We always evaluate as coaches, we have a meeting and we’ll see. You know…Like I said, I’m not a huge lefty-lefty guy but we’ll see how that plays out…They all want to [play with Hughes], I know that. It’s a situation where especially early if you want to try things, you do it now. But I’m not going to experiment for three weeks. I mean, we got to make sure we get someone there. And like I said the guy that’s going to be there, it’s gotta be — it might be two guys, you know he usually plays about 23-24 minutes. We’d like to get them to 22,23,24 minutes. So you know the guys that are in the spot probably have to share that responsibility.”
Tocchet also spoke about how he’ll deploy his lineup with a shorter preseason to work with, saying he’ll try to get his regulars figured out earlier than he would in a typical year.
We can hardly wait!