Demitra to Play Saturday

Team 1040 is reporting that Pavol Demitra will likely make his season debut Saturday versus the Pittsburgh Penguins. Great news, now all they have to decide is where to put him. Has the second line of Samuelsson, Kesler, and Raymond shown enough to not get broken up? I’m not sure it has.

It appears Alain Vigneault isn’t ready to shake up his top two lines. Here’s what the lines looked like at practice today:

Middleweight Champion of the NHL, Rick Rypien

With four days to go until the next Canucks game (weird schedule this year, isn’t it?), I thought it’d be nice to shine the light on a still very underrated Canuck: Rick Rypien. I think this guy was a little bit forgotten about because of the injury/personal troubles he’s had the last few seasons. He hasn’t played an AHL game in two years, but has only played in 51 NHL games since.

The Replacements

In a weird twist this season, the Canucks have all 8 of their defencemen healthy (defencemen usually are the most injury prone), and a whole whack of injuries to forward, and then of course there’s Roberto Luongo. The result has been a lot of dull hockey, with the team trying to play more defensive due to their lack of fire power. With that said, here’s a review of the replacements for Luongo, Daniel Sedin, Pavol Demitra and Ryan Johnson (as well as Kyle Wellwood and Rick Rypien here and there).

Ah oh, not Luongo! Injury Update

Roberto Luongo, yet again, is injured. He’ll be out at least a week with a rib injury. Whether or not it’s only a week remains to be seen, as Canucks management has been known to downplay injuries in the past.

What’s Wrong With this Team?

They’re 0-3 and in less than one week have gone from cup contenders to talentless bums (according to the bandwagon douchebags anyways). Well, the fact of the matter is that this team isn’t as good as those early season predictions (loyal Canuckz.com readers already knew this after reading this post) and they’re not as bad as their 0-3 record suggests.

Blast From the Past… Scatchard Attempts Comeback with Canucks

In the latest development in what can now be considered an unusual career, the pride of Salmon Arm, Dave Scatchard will be trying out with the Canucks in training camp.