No Brock Boeser at Scrimmage; Canucks Say ‘Precautionary’

Canucks forward Brock Boeser missed the final scrimmage of training camp and won’t be playing in either of the split squad games on Sunday against the Calgary Flames. There was no indication of the nature of the injury, nor an upper or lower body designation. It’s not considered serious.

“It’s a beautiful day, I’m sure he wanted to enjoy it outside a bit,” joked Canucks General Manager Patrik Allvin. “No, it’s just precautionary early on, I’m not sure if he’s going to play tomorrow, I haven’t seen the line-ups, but he’ll be back soon.”

An equally jovial head coach Bruce Boudreau didn’t seemed overly concerned either, re-stating the reasoning for keeping Boeser out of the line-up.

“Just precautionary,” Boudreau said, “hey, we don’t want anybody hurt, so if you get a thumbnail, we’re saying ‘whoa nellie’. It’s not the end of the world right now, so that was our thought on that.”

Boudreau did know the line-ups for Sunday on Saturday afternoon and indicated Boeser wasn’t pencilled in.

“I wasn’t planning on playing him tomorrow anyway, so he won’t be playing,” Boudreau said. “We’ve made the line-ups, but I’m not going to tell you them because everything goes haywire, but I wasn’t planning on playing him tomorrow.”

Boudreau and his NHL coaching staff will man the bench for the home game against the Flames while Jeremy Colliton and the AHL Abbotsford Canucks coaching staff will travel to Calgary with the other squad and handle the road bench. The roster for the home game will be a bit more fan friendly, featuring some familiar faces, compared to that of the travelling contingent.

Allvin indicated the first round of cuts could be expected on Monday or Tuesday, Monday being a complete day off for all staff and players. More trimming will likely be done before a tighter Canucks roster takes on the Seattle Kraken on Thursday at Rogers Arena.

((You can watch a handful of Boeser’s Friday scrimmage shifts and see yesterday’s feature here.))