Vancouver Canucks and Flames Match – Both Teams Look for Bounceback

The Vancouver Canucks lost to the Seattle Kraken 5-3 Sunday night in Spokane while the Calgary Flames were getting trounced by the Edmonton Oilers 4-0 at home.

We know the old saying “ass”uming or assumptions make an ass out of you and me, but we’ll do it anyway. Assuming that defenceman Quinn Hughes and top-line centre Elias Pettersson sign contracts in the not-so-distant future, there are two roster-spot battles going on in training camp that many find most intriguing. This after the natural trickle-down affect of having those two young gentlemen in the line-up.

Yes, it’s still early in camp, but one gets the sense that Jack Rathbone is on the cusp of closing out Olli Juolevi for line-up consideration on the Vancouver Canucks blueline. Sunday night in Spokane the first period of the Canucks 5-3 loss to the Seattle Kraken was the “Jack Rathbone Show.” He opened the scoring with an unassisted 1st-period snipe after popping out of the penalty box, and minutes later added an assist on a goal by Brock Boeser to make it 2-0. Later, Rathbone had the only successful attempt in a five-round shoot-out to close out the evening.

Camp has been good to Rathbone … Juolevi, not so much.

The other fun spot worth watching is Zack MacEwen, Alex Chiasson, and Will Lockwood trying to impress coaches for a spot in the bottom six. They’re all in the line-up tonight.

Vancouver Canucks Lines and Pairs.

Tanner Pearson – Bo Horvat – Alex Chiasson

Conor Garland – JT Miller – Vasili Podkolzin

Matthew Highmore – Justin Dowling – Zack MacEwen

Jonah Gadjovich – Chase Wouters – William Lockwood

Oliver Ekman-Larson – Tucker Poolman

Jack Rathbone – Tyler Myers

Olli Juolevi – Jett Woo

(starting goalie) Mike DiPietro

Arturs Silovs