Utica Comets year-end award winners will help fill out Canucks' Black Aces (mikey dipietro)

mikey dipietro

Utica Comets year-end award winners will help fill out Canucks' Black Aces

By Carol Schram

Jun 8, 2020 • 2:21 pm

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Last week, the Vancouver Canucks' AHL farm team rolled out its team awards for 2019-20.

Leading scorer Reid Boucher picked up three awards — named MVP by both the team and the local media, as well as winning the Three Stars Award.

Goaltender Mikey DiPietro was named 'Class Guy' and 'Guy With The Most Heart':

Guillaume Brisebois earned the award for best defenseman:

Sophomore Kole Lind was named the team's most improved player.

And team captain Carter Bancks was named Best in the Community.

Some players from that group will be joining the Canucks when their training camp gets underway in Phase 3 of the Return To Play Plan, likely in July as things look now.

Back in May, we started discussing which Utica Comets players could earn the call to be Black Aces when the Canucks get back in action.

Iain MacIntyre of Sportsnet took on that subject on Monday.

He emphasizes once again that we don't know if Micheal Ferland or Josh Leivo will be ready to play when camp gets underway but regardless, the big club already has a surplus of forwards.

“We have five lines of forwards (at the NHL level), so we don’t have to bring in as many forwards," Canucks general manager Jim Benning told MacIntyre. "But we’ve only got seven D, so if you have two guys go down, the second injury on defence, one of those guys called up is going to play."

I've read that total roster size is still something that needs to be finalized in the Phase 3 protocol. Using the parameter of 28 skaters that has been widely circulated, MacIntyre figures probably two forwards and three defensemen, plus DiPietro, will get the nod from the group of "10 or 11" players who were told to stay ready after the AHL season was officially cancelled last month.

For his part, Travis Green left little doubt that he's looking for a roster that'll give his team the best chance to win — and advance.

“People say, ‘You’ll finally play meaningful games,’… Green told MacIntyre. “That’s not what this is about to me. It’s not about getting a few games under our belt under hard and exciting circumstances, in pressure-filled games. This is about, how do we win the first series, and then how do we win the second series? And I can tell you, we’re not going into this thinking we’re only going to be playing one or two rounds.…

As MacIntyre points out, that mindset probably gives the edge to players with experience.

After factoring in team needs, he namechecks Brogan Rafferty, Guillaume Brisebois and Olli Juolevi as the likely candidates on defense, along with Tyler Graovac and Reid Boucher up front.

Based on the experience theory, I'd probably put Ashton Sautner ahead of Juolevi as a left-side blueliner. And despite another stellar AHL season from Boucher, I wonder if the Canucks would be more tempted to tap Sven Baertschi, who stayed healthy all season and whose skating is more NHL-ready?

Baertschi's 27, has 291 games of NHL experience, and has 138 points — 0.47 points per game.

Boucher's a year younger at 27, has 133 games of NHL experience, and has 42 points — 0.32 points per game.

Also — even if the first priority is to try to win some hockey games, Benning might get an additional benefit from putting Baertschi into the lineup. If he does well — especially on such a big stage — perhaps that opens the door for Benning to deal the last year of Baertschi's contract, something he wasn't able to do at the trade deadline in February.

It'll be interesting to see how these decisions play out once an official date for the start of training camp is set and roster sizes are finalized.

To close out today — this one's for all you foodies. The NHL is launching a new cooking show this week.

'Skates & Plates' debuts this Wednesday, with one-time Vancouver Canucks centre Nick Bonino learning how to make the classic French dish Steak Diane and pommes frites from celebrity chef Ludo Lefebvre.

I've seen the episode — it's a lot of fun. Bonino's great, and the meal looks amazing.

I wrote about it for Forbes. Read the story and check out the trailer here. Thanks!

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