In their final on-ice session before the Vancouver Canucks have to set their opening night roster, the team skated for close to an hour on Sunday morning at UBC.
There were a few items of note from the spirited session.

What we saw

Pius Suter was a full participant in practice for the first time since Monday. On Saturday, he wore a non-contact jersey, but on Sunday was wearing a regular blue practice sweater and skating on the wing for the first time since last season. Throughout training camp and the preseason, he has been used exclusively as a centreman. But the emergence of Aatu Räty has perhaps forced Rick Tocchet to reassess the way he deploys Suter in the early going. Suter skated on the right side with Raty and Nils Höglander at today’s practice.
Arshdeep Bains lined up as the extra forward on Sunday as the Canucks went with a fourth line of Teddy Blueger between Kiefer Sherwood and Nils Aman.
For the third straight day, Conor Garland was missing from a team workout. However, Garland skated on his own prior to practice and assured head coach Rick Tocchet that he would be ready for Wednesday’s season opener.
Goalie Kevin Lankinen continues to wear his Nashville pads and gloves, but the new netminder did roll out a new look at Sunday’s practice. It’s expected Lankinen will have fresh Canucks gear in time for Wednesday’s season opener.
The Canucks devoted a good portion of Sunday’s practice to special teams as the new season draws near. They also ended practice with shootout practice apparently at the request of the goaltenders.
Aätu Raty stayed out well after practice and had the ice to himself. The young centre set up a number of pucks between the hashmarks and worked on his shot.
The Canucks are expected to take Monday as a full team day off before returning to the practice ice on Tuesday. The club has to submit its season-opening roster to the NHL by 2pm Pacific time on Monday.

What we heard

Rick Tocchet on what he’s seen from Elias Pettersson through the preseason: “He’s got to keep pushing. These three on three drills (in practice), I want to see him dominate. That’s the next level. All the best players, when you do three on three drills, they come up with pucks, they have the puck all the time. So you just have to make sure every day you work on that sort of stuff.”
Tocchet on his early season goaltending plans: ‘Whoever starts – probably Silovs on Wednesday – we’ll go from there. We have to get Lanks in there. It’s not going to be three weeks from now, put it that way. It’s going to be fairly soon. Lanks has come in here and impressed us and we’re not scared to go to him.”
Pius Suter on getting clearance to rejoin the group for practice: “It feels pretty good. I feel confident. It gets better every day. It was a nice practice to get back in and battle with the guys. You never want to miss games.”
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