The Vancouver Canucks packed a lot into Wednesday’s summer skate at Rogers Arena, with 30 players on the ice and a scrimmage that gave the session some bite.
There were 27 skaters and three goaltenders in all, with the usual regulars joined by a handful of Abbotsford Canucks players. The workout began with a standard neutral-zone passing drill that led into odd-man rushes going the other way, but the real focus was the scrimmage: two 25-minute periods separated by a 10-minute Zamboni break.
Team Blue featured Arshdeep Bains, Brock Boeser, Kirill Kudryavtsev, Jonathan Lekkerimäki, Drew O’Connor, Liam Öhgren, Elias Pettersson (F), Elias Pettersson (D), Marco Rossi, Max Sasson, Luke Schenn, Tom Willander, and Anri Ravinskis, who wore a red non-contact jersey.
Team White skated with Vilmer Alriksson, Zeev Buium, Filip Chytil, Paul Cotter, Jake DeBrusk, Brendan Gallagher, Filip Hronek, Linus Karlsson, Victor Mancini, Ty Mueller, Jamie Oleksiak, Aatu Räty, Ilya Safonov, and Chase Wouters.
Kevin Lankinen, Nikita Tolopilo, and Ty Young handled the goaltending duties. Thatcher Demko was not with the main group yet, though a Canucks representative confirmed he has been skating on his own.
There wasn’t much in the way of hard-edged evaluation to pull from a summer skate, but a few things stood out. Willander looked noticeably bigger, stronger, and more comfortable on the ice.
He appeared to have added muscle, and his conditioning looked sharper too. That lined up with what he later told assembled media after practice, saying fitness was a key offseason focus.
He also made the most visible impact of the day by scoring the first two goals of the scrimmage for Team Blue.
Alriksson also found the net twice, including one goal that beat the goalie to the far side right corner. Schenn, meanwhile, looked like he was enjoying every second of it.
From the top of the point, he pulled off a skate kick deke, moved the puck to a teammate on the half-wall, and then drifted into the slot hunting for a tap-in. The chance nearly came through, but he couldn’t finish.
By the final count, Team White came away with a 6-3 win.
After practice, DeBrusk said the new arrivals have blended in smoothly: “Yeah, seamless. You know, they’re all really good dudes.
You know, it’s kind of funny. It’s like the first day of school - I think I say that every training camp - getting to meet them, they obviously have a lot of wisdom not only for the younger guys but for us veterans as well.
There’s always some sort of connection in the hockey world. They’ve been great guys, and you know they definitely made themselves felt so far.”
Willander also talked about the influence of the veterans in the room, pointing to the way they’ve helped set the tone in the early days on the ice: “I just think as a person, those older guys mean so much to us. Just teaching us small habits and just kind of pulling the group together.
I think a good example is just like after skate yesterday, those are the guys that kind of pull the group together to do these like small conditioning [drills]. Like after, you might not feel comfortable telling all the people to do that.
But I think that’s very important to kind of get the group together like that.”
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