The Vancouver Canucks get one more preseason look this afternoon, and the spotlight is on the group that’s trying to make the final cut. With their four-game exhibition schedule wrapping up against the Seattle Kraken at Rogers Arena, this is the last evaluation window before NHL teams have to hand in their 23-man opening rosters on Monday. Puck drop is set for 4 pm PT.
Kevin Lankinen is expected to take the net for the full game, giving the Canucks a final chance to see him under a heavy workload. He was sharp in his first preseason appearance, turning aside 28 of 31 shots in Tuesday’s 3-1 loss in Calgary.
The Canucks are expected to roll with the same forward combinations from Friday’s open practice. That would put Jonathan Lekkerimäki on the right side with Elias Pettersson and Jake DeBrusk, while Marco Rossi centres Liam Öhgren and Brock Boeser. Max Sasson is set to move down the middle between Drew O’Connor and Linus Karlsson, and Paul Cotter would line up at centre with Arshdeep Bains and Brendan Gallagher.
On the blue line, the expected pairings are Zeev Buium with Filip Hronek, Jamie Oleksiak with Tom Willander, and Elias Pettersson with Luke Schenn.
Aatu Räty, Victor Mancini and Guillaume Brisebois are expected to be the extra skaters. Räty has already appeared in two preseason games, and despite the Canucks’ shortage of natural centres, he is not eligible to play tonight.
Vancouver enters the finale at 0-3, coming off a 2-1 loss to Edmonton on Thursday. Through three preseason games, the Canucks have scored only four goals, with Arshdeep Bains accounting for two of them.
Linus Karlsson scored the lone goal against the Oilers. The team has two power-play goals and two goals at 5-on-5.
The Canucks also made a roster move Friday, adding goalie Leevi Meriläinen to bring the camp total to 27 players. The club announced that Thatcher Demko, dealing with a hip injury, and Filip Chytil, out with a shoulder injury, will begin the season on injured reserve.
Seattle comes in with a chance to finish the preseason undefeated. The Kraken already beat Vancouver last Saturday and then followed that with two wins over the Calgary Flames.
Joey D’Accord is expected to start in goal for Seattle. He has played only 40 minutes this preseason, including the first two periods against the Canucks in last Saturday’s exhibition opener at Climate Pledge Arena.
The Kraken will be without forward Mackie Samoskevich, who has been ruled out with an upper body injury and listed as day to day. Seattle also has 27 players in camp as it sorts out the final roster decisions, including former Canuck Curtis Douglas, who is still in the mix for an opening-night spot.
The teams met last Saturday in Seattle, where the Kraken won 4-2 in the preseason opener for both clubs. Their first regular-season meeting is set for November 19th in the Emerald City.
Tonight’s game will air on Sportsnet with John Shorthouse and Dave Tomlinson on the call.
Manny Malhotra said the focus for Jonathan Lekkerimäki is about more than just his shot. “For us, we’ve talked about it all camp long.
Obviously, everybody talks about his offensive potential and that’s one element of his game. But more so, the things we’ve been working with him on are those transferable skills of just being heavier on puck battles and coming up with puck battles and applying pressure up ice and not just waiting for that one shot opportunity.
So for him, it’s about getting to places quicker, coming up with pucks and the willingness to get to netfront and not just using his shot on the perimeter.”
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For a team that has already spent too much time piecing together its crease, the addition is less about depth in the abstract and more about finding a goalie who can be trusted to handle real minutes. Merilainen is now in the picture for Vancouver, and with an arbitration-eligible restricted free agency decision waiting next July, his time with the Canucks could quickly become one of the more interesting subplots around the roster. [Read more 🡒]