The Vancouver Canucks were without Tom Willander in warmups ahead of Saturday’s game against the Edmonton Oilers, and that absence is set to stretch to a third straight night.
Willander has been out since suffering a lower-body injury on Tuesday, and the Canucks will keep leaning on Guillaume Brisebois while he sits. The second-year defenseman has been a steady presence on Vancouver’s back end, and his absence leaves a noticeable hole.
He’s the only Canucks defenseman who hasn’t posted a negative plus-minus, and his stat line shows how much he’s doing even without a big scoring burst: three assists, four penalty minutes, 10 hits and 17 shot blocks in 16 games. After a 21-point rookie season, he still hasn’t found that same offensive rhythm, but he is on pace to top last year’s totals in shots, hits and blocks. He’s also been asked to handle tougher minutes, averaging 20 minutes per game and logging a career-high 25:43 on October 13th.
If all goes well, his next shot to get back in the lineup comes Monday against the Philadelphia Flyers.
Around the league, Toronto had its own blue-line scare when Morgan Rielly left Saturday’s game against the Montreal Canadiens with a lower-body injury. The injury appeared to happen when he blocked a shot from Canadiens center Nick Suzuki, and Rielly was done after just 5:45 of ice time.
Oliver Ekman-Larsson picked up the slack in Rielly’s absence, skating the second 20-minute game of his season and finishing with three hits and a plus-one. If Rielly has to miss more time, Dakota Mermis would be the next man in.
Mermis has one point in three games this season. Toronto would be looking for a different kind of spark on the back end without Rielly, who leads the team’s defense with 12 points in 17 games.
Bowen Byram’s situation in Chicago is still unresolved, too. According to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman on Saturday Headlines, Byram’s agent Darren Ferris said the defenseman won’t return to the Chicago Blackhawks until he sees a “certain specialist”.
Byram has now missed 10 straight games and 11 overall this season because of an unspecified upper-body injury. Chicago brought him in to anchor the top of the defense after signing him to a six-year, $75MM contract this summer, but he’s only managed one assist and a minus-seven in six games while averaging more than 24 minutes a night. Once he’s healthy, he’s expected to be a key part of Chicago’s push to climb out of a 4-12-1 start.
In Other News...
Blackhawks Suddenly Face A Trade Deadline Problem Months Too Early
The Blackhawks are already acting like a team that cannot afford to wait. After a rough start and a pair of heavy recent losses, the organization has moved into the kind of early-season urgency usually reserved for much later on the calendar, with a players-only meeting underscoring how quickly the mood has shifted. Chicago is trying to find ways to stabilize the roster before the season gets away from it, and that has pushed the front office into active trade conversations far sooner than anyone expected.
Those talks have reportedly stretched beyond simple due diligence, with the Blackhawks exploring ways to add help while also gauging what they might be willing to move. The situation speaks to how unsettled things have become: a team that entered the year hoping for progress is now confronting a problem that looks a lot like a deadline dilemma, only without the luxury of time to let it play out. [Read more 🡒]
Blackhawks Suddenly Face A Trade Question Fans Never Expected
The Blackhawks skid reached six straight after a 9-2 loss to the Hurricanes, and the frustration has started to spill into the bigger picture around the roster. What looked like a long rebuild now has a fresh layer of urgency, with the front office under Kyle Davidson reportedly taking a hard look at the NHL trade market as the team searches for a way to steady itself.
A players-only meeting followed the defeat, a sign the locker room knows the current stretch is more than a bad week. With the standings slipping and the pressure rising, Chicago is suddenly in a place few expected this early, where the conversation is no longer just about development but about how far the organization is willing to go to change the trajectory. [Read more 🡒]
Hurricanes Had Connor Bedard Sounding Defeated After Carolina Rout
Connor Bedard did not sugarcoat the Blackhawks latest setback after Carolina rolled to a 9-2 win, and the captains frustration came through clearly as Chicago tried to absorb another rough result. Even with the room still described as united, Bedard sounded worn down by the teams record and the lack of progress, a familiar theme for a club still searching for traction early in the season.
Bedard has still produced 14 points in 12 games and is only weeks removed from signing a five-year extension, so his voice carries extra weight when the losses pile up like this. For the Blackhawks, the bigger concern is not just the scoreline but the way the defeats keep exposing how far they have to go before the results match the talent they are trying to build around. [Read more 🡒]