Penticton, BC – The day has finally arrived! Vancouver Canucks training camp officially gets underway today from the South Okanagan Events Centre in Penticton. It’s our favourite time of year here at CanucksArmy, and we’ll have wall-to-wall coverage of all the happenings from camp for the rest of the week.

We’ll have daily live blogs each day, and here is the first one!

The Canucks posted their training camp schedule on Wednesday night.

Today’s on-ice session officially begins at 9:30 AM. We’ve published today’s live blog at 9 AM, and we’ll have the first update published around 9:45. We’ll have line rushes, notes on drills, and more topical information in this live blog. Of course, we’ll also have takeaways later in the day, features after our conversations with players and head coach Adam Foote.

One big question I have is who will play with Elias Pettersson on the first day of camp? Last year, it was Jonathan Lekkerimäki and Jake DeBrusk. Who will it be this year? Will the coaching staff want to get an early look at what newcomer Evander Kane can do riding shotgun with Pettersson? Will Brock Boeser get as much time as possible to build some very important chemistry with Pettersson after finding most of his success the past few seasons playing primarily with JT Miller? So many questions!

Another note: Did the Canucks give us a sneak peek at one of the “top six” lines we’ll see at camp? On Wednesday, they advertised — and confirmed — five players who would be playing in Abbotsford for next week’s preseason game against the Calgary Flames. Those players are Thatcher Demko, Marcus Pettersson, Tyler Myers, Nils Höglander, Filip Chytil, and Conor Garland. That’s a defence pairing that we’ll certainly see, and could that trio of forwards also be a line we see?

Hours before training camp kicked off, the Canucks released their three groupings who will skate with one another:

Forwards: Brock Boeser, Arshdeep Bains, Mackenzie MacEachern, Elias Pettersson, Kiefer Sherwood, Vilmer Alriksson, Aatu Räty, Riley Patterson, Jake DeBrusk, Braeden Cootes, Vitali Kravtsov, and Linus Karlsson.

Defencemen: Tom Willander, PO Joseph, Derek Forbort, Marcus Pettersson Sawyer Mynio, Jimmy Schuldt, Tyler Myers, and Kirill Kudryavtsev.

Goalies: Thatcher Demko, Nikita Tolopilo, and Aleksei Medvedev.

Forwards: Conor Garland, Danila Klimovich, Joseph LaBate, Drew O’Connor, Nils Höglander, Jonathan Lekkerimäki, Teddy Blueger, Chase Stillman, Max Sasson, Filip Chytil, Nils Aman, and Evander Kane.

Defencemen: Joe Arntsen, Filip Hronek, Elias Pettersson, Jayden Lee, Quinn Hughes, Parker Alcos, Nikolai Knyzhov, and Victor Mancini.

Goalies: Jiri Patera, Kevin Lankinen, and Ty Young

Forwards: Ty Mueller, Gabriel Chiarot, Josh Bloom, Anri Ravinskis, Jackson Kunz, Cooper Walker, Kieren Dervin, and Dino Kambeitz.

Defencemen: Zack Sandhu, and Guillaume Brisebois

Goalies: Aku Koskenvuo

Abbotsford Canucks captain Chase Wouters was seen skating with injured Ty Mueller ahead of Group C taking the ice. However, he was not listed on any of the groups. We will update you if he does in fact join one of the groups today.

The goaltenders have hit the ice ahead of Group A joining for their session. Thatcher Demko got work in with Nikita Tolopilo and prospect Aleksei Medvedev.

Group A started their session focusing primarily on creating with speed off the rush:

Then they went to the whiteboard before commencing a drill focusing on retrievals and quick breakouts. A coach would dump the puck into the corner while another coach pressured the retreating defenceman. The defenceman’s task was to make a deceptive backhand pass before aiding in the breakout up the ice by wheeling behind the net in the opposite direction. Here is forward Elias Pettersson completing the drill as the first man back.

We were able to draw some conclusions from the groupings earlier in the day, but we officially saw Group A’s line rushes. Here’s how they lined up:

DeBrusk-Pettersson-Boeser
Bains-Cootes-Sherwood
Kravtsov-Raty-Karlsson
Alriksson-Patterson-MacEachern

M. Pettersson-Myers
Forbort-Willander
Kudryavtsev-Joseph
Mynio-Schuldt

Group A wrapped up their session with battle drills. They started with some one-on-one drills down low, transitioned to two-on-twos at full length of the ice before concluding with the same battles but within the hash marks.

Afterwards, Quinn Hughes, Conor Garland, Kevin Lankinen and the rest of Group B hit the ice for their first reps at Canucks training camp.

After a handful of skating drills, we got to see how Group B would officially line up: Here were the lines:

Kane-Chytil-Lekkerimäki
Höglander-Blueger-Garland
O’Connor-Sasson-Klimovich
LaBate-Aman-Stillman

Hughes-Hronek
E. Pettersson-Alcos
Knyzhov-Mancini
Arntsen-Lee

We’ll have player quotes and more coming to the site soon, but with Group B leaving the ice, that concludes today’s live blog. Both Group A and Group B emphasized rush offence, as we saw in the drill where one defenceman was jumping up in the rush to create a four man attack with speed.

Foote will be speaking to media later this afternoon, and we’ll have a full recap of that up later on the site. Thanks for checking in on today’s live blog!

Check out our first Raw Footage of the season over on YouTube, below!