The Canucks released their roster for the split-squad pre-season games that they will be playing in China against the Los Angeles Kings. It is chock full of veterans, which has some Canucks fans wondering if this is the same roster that will start the regular season.
It would make a lot of sense. The Canucks likely want to use this unusual pre-season trip to coalesce the team’s chemistry: there’s nothing like being in an unfamiliar place going through a shared experience to bring people together.
The roster heading to China has 24 players, including both players signed to Professional Try-Out contracts. It would be easy to see the Canucks sign one, release the other, and have their 23-man roster for opening night.
The issue is that the Canucks’ roster for China doesn’t feature any of the young players that fans are eager to see. There’s no Brock Boeser, Nikolay Goldobin, Jake Virtanen, Olli Juolevi, or even Anton Rodin.
That would seem to make the group staying behind to play the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers the pseudo-Utica Comets. They’ll even be coached by Comets head coach Trent Cull. That would put to lie the claims that the Canucks would be willing to make a spot for a young player that proved themselves in the pre-season, but only if the Canucks China roster is, in fact, their opening night roster. Travis Green made it pretty clear during training camp that wasn’t the case.
“There’s going to be lots of guys staying back that hopefully have a good chance to make the team,” he said. “Those are going to be big games for those guys.”
“A lot of our young guys, if they’re left behind,” he added later, “they’re going to get to play the power play, play a lot of good minutes, and there’s going to be a lot of eyes on you. A lot of our management is staying behind to watch those games. Those are far from meaningless games. Those are huge games for deciding who’s going to play on the team or not.”
There are lots of reasons why the Canucks would take a veteran-heavy lineup to China. Perhaps it’s a reward to the players with seniority or maybe those are the players most used to the media frenzy that will follow them around. It could simply be that the NHL asked for a veteran-heavy lineup so the NHL could put its best foot forward in China.
Another reason might be that they don’t want to distract the players on the bubble from the task of trying to make the Canucks’ opening night roster. The last thing Brock Boeser and Nikolay Goldobin need as they try to impress the Canucks brass is a whirlwind tour of China, complete with jet lag, press conferences, and sightseeing.
Instead, the Canucks’ young prospects will get big minutes in their pre-season games, giving them every opportunity to prove themselves in front of the members of Canucks management that stay behind.
Here is the roster heading to China, including some speculative line combinations on my part:
Sven Baertschi - Bo Horvat - Thomas Vanek
Daniel Sedin - Henrik Sedin - Markus Granlund
Loui Eriksson - Brandon Sutter - Sam Gagner
Scottie Upshall - Alexander Burmistrov - Derek Dorsett
Ryan White
Reid Boucher
Alex Edler - Chris Tanev
Ben Hutton - Troy Stecher
Michael Del Zotto - Erik Gudbranson
Patrick Wiercioch
Alex Biega
Jacob Markstrom
Anders Nilsson
