Penticton, BC — Day two of Vancouver Canucks training camp is officially underway from the South Okanagan Events Centre in beautiful Penticton, BC. We here at CanucksArmy are going to be bringing you everything you need to know all week long.

As you read in yesterday’s live blog, day one of camp was focused on some new systems the Canucks would like to try out. We saw drills with defencemen jumping up in the rush to serve as the triggerman, zone entries with control, the club’s defensive zone pressure tactics cranked way up, and more.

Another thing we saw was our first taste of line combinations. With a shorter camp, will the Canucks change any of these lines today? Or will we see the same-looking groups rolled out as they prepare for their first preseason game in Seattle on Sunday night? Head coach Adam Foote said the Canucks wouldn’t be making any cuts from their preseason roster in camp, so don’t expect to see junior/AHL players sent home before this year’s shorter camp concludes.

But will Jonathan Lekkerimäki still get a shot to play with Filip Chytil and Evander Kane? Chytil looked very good on day one of camp, and perhaps that trio can click with Lekkerimäki serving as a lethal shooting threat, while Kane serves as a bigger body and a legitimate scoring threat off the rush.

That group will be the second one to skate today, so keep checking back here for updates!

The only change to the day two schedule from day one is that Group B will skate at 10:30 AM and Group A will go at noon. Group C — made primarily of AHL and junior players — skates first today.

A reminder of the groups:

As Group B’s goalies are spilling onto the ice, there was no sign of Kevin Lankinen as Ty Young and Jiri Patera got work in with Marco Torenius. Thatcher Demko shared yesterday that Lankinen was expecting the birth of his first child “in the next couple of days”, so while it seemed like that could have been where he was, Lankinen eventually joined the group, albeit late.

The Canucks began the day with a drill focusing on transporting the puck through the neutral zone and another where rush offence was once again the focus. Here are videos of the drills:

Group B’s line rushes were unchanged from yesterday. As a reminder:

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

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

The intensity picked up in Group B’s final drill of the day as they battled for ice down low.

Some final thoughts of Group B:

-For the second day in a row, Chase Stillman stood out to me for the right reasons. He’s a smoother skater than I thought, and his shot is heavier than I anticipated it would be as well. He’s strong along the walls — as we saw yesterday in battle drills — and he’s got some tools. The production in the AHL hasn’t been there, but he could be an intriguing name to keep an eye on in Abbotsford this season.
-Some of the execution on drills today looked sloppy at times, which is a good reminder of why we have training camp in the first place. Nice to see the intensity pick up at the end.

Like Group B, Group A’s lines remained unchanged.

Some standouts from this group on day one were Braeden Cootes, PO Joseph, and a quicker-looking Linus Karlsson. Unsurprisingly, they ran through the same drills as Group B.

As mentioned above, Cootes has looked the part. In the down-low two-on-two drills, veteran defenceman Tyler Myers made it apparent to give the youngster a little tougher of a battle that session, but it did not really faze Cootes. The two had a solid battle, but Cootes managed to get the shot off, with Myers losing his balancing and falling to the ice after the play.

His passes looked crisp; his skating was smooth, and his shot stood out for his quick and devious release. Still a long way to go to even earn a nine-game stint in the NHL, but he looks like he’s fitting in, especially after this move when Myers stepped up on him:

Group A ran the same drills to end their session as Group B, but have now concluded camp for the day. The two groups remained focused on rush offence and a neutral zone swarming type of defence. We will have player quotes and more available shortly.

Thanks for tuning into CanucksArmy’s Day 2 live blog! Make sure to check out the CanucksArmy YouTube channel for full videos of player scrums.

Check out our first raw footage of the season below!