The Vancouver Canucks At This Point
from Iain MacIntyre of Sportsnet,
Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes missed the first half of camp before the club re-signed them to lucrative second contracts, and first-line winger Brock Boeser missed the last half with an undisclosed injury that threatens his status for Wednesday’s season-opener in Edmonton.
Defenceman Travis Hamonic missed the entire camp and remains home in Manitoba for “personal reasons” related to the NHL’s third season amid the coronavirus pandemic. Fourth-line forwards and key penalty killers, Tyler Motte and Brandon Sutter, remain out indefinitely with injuries.
All these missing pieces made it impossible for coach Travis Green to fit together his lineup puzzle and also contributed to the Canucks’ failure to generate the momentum they desperately wanted heading into this season after the disastrous last one.
“You're not playing with the full lineup much, really at all, missing people,” veteran forward J.T. Miller said late Saturday. “You're just trying to get your bearings, I think. You want to win these games; you're just trying to come together as a team. Obviously, the closer we get to the end of the pre-season, it's more and more of our (NHL) squad. We're ready for the real thing; I don't know what else to say. We just want to play. We want to have our guys back. . . and I think we're excited to go into that building (in Edmonton) and play against a really good team. It's going to be an awesome test and an awesome road trip for us to get going.”
The Canucks begin what they hope will be a season of redemption after last spring’s last-place finish with six straight road games.
It’s not an ideal schedule for a team looking for traction as it absorbs a handful of key newcomers, including top-pairing defenceman Oliver Ekman-Larsson and scoring winger Conor Garland.
“I thought we got a lot of good work done with our group,” coach Travis Green said of the 2-5-0 pre-season. “We've worked hard probably more on the defensive side of the puck than we have in the past. I see a lot of the stuff that we're working on transitioning into the games, which I like. We've had a lot of guys out of camp, which has affected the camp but it hasn't affected, I think, the overall teaching that we're trying to do.”
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