Canucks; Boeser Skates, Hughes Does Not, Hamonic on Leave

Brock Boeser skated at practice for the Vancouver Canucks in Detroit Monday morning. He didn’t confirm that he’d play on Tuesday.

“Just taking everything one day at a time, first step was to get through practice and I felt I had a pretty good practice today, so we’ll see what happens tomorrow,” Boeser said.

“I’m not sure how he feels after practice, but we’re hopeful he’ll play tomorrow,” Head Coach Travis Green added.

Quinn Hughes did not skate. After two games of 27-plus-minutes and then 29-plus in Detroit, it was called a maintenance day.

— A couple of national media outlets, including the salary cap monitor Capfriendly, were reporting that Travis Hamonic was suspended by the Canucks for failing to report to Abbotsford at this point. When they waived him they saved $1.25-million off his salary hit. A suspension would mean saving the remaining $1.85-million.

“I think there’s a report out there that’s he’s suspended,” Green said, “but that definitely isn’t the case, but other than that, there’s not an update.”

The Vancouver Canucks issued a statement just after noon on Monday: “General Manager Jim Benning announced today that defenceman Travis Hamonic has been placed on a temporary leave of absence. The mutually agreed upon leave of absence will give Travis time as works through his personal matters. The team asks that media respect Travis’s privacy and the club will not be making any further comments on this matter at this time.”

— Has the Alex Chiasson in the top-six forwards experiment at even strength ended? One would think so. He definitely has had some strong moments as the net-front presence on the power play, but his influence on the top line, where he started game one, waned quickly. The Canucks needed to, and have, gone with more quickness and dexterity up there. Even on the man advantage, Chiasson would probably love a little more finish to his game recently. He has generated eight shots on goal thus far.

“I think he has a goal and an assist on the power play, big part of both power play goals he was on for, good at the net-front, nothing has changed on what I think of Alex,” Green said.

These were the practice lines Monday from the radio voice of the Vancouver Canucks, Brendan Batchelor.

Tanner Pearson, Bo Horvat, Conor Garland

Nils Höglander, Elias Pettersson, Brock Boeser

Justin Dowling, JT Miller, Vasily Podkolzin

Juho Lammikko, Jason Dickinson, Matthew Highmore

Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Tyler Myers

Brad Hunt, Tucker Poolman

Jack Rathbone, Kyle Burroughs/Luke Schenn

Extras: Nic Petan, Alex Chiasson