Vancouver Canucks Young Stars Tourney Kicks Off, Zhukenov Out with Injury (john weisbrod)

john weisbrod

Vancouver Canucks Young Stars Tourney Kicks Off, Zhukenov Out with Injury

By Carol Schram

Sep 16, 2016 • 2:09 pm

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The Vancouver Canucks prospects hit the ice in Penticton on Thursday for their first practice ahead of this year's Young Stars Tournament.

Game action for the Canucks kicks off against the Edmonton Oilers tonight at 7:30 p.m. I haven't seen it explicitly stated that the game will be livestreaming on Canucks.com, but I certainly expect that will be the case, as it has been in past years.

It is definitely being broadcast on TSN1040, and if you need a backup video source, you can use EdmontonOilers.com.

The team made its first injury announcement during Thursday's practice. Centre Dmitry Zhukenov, the Canucks' fourth-round pick in 2015, is out of the tournament.

After tonight's game, the Canucks are off on Saturday, then will play their back-to-back games on Sunday and Monday. I would expect that means we'll get a healthy dose of the "A" prospects in tonight's lineup.

Here's a bare-bones look at who's expected to play:

Once again, you can click here for the full roster.

At Thursday's skate, we got this interview with assistant general manager John Weisbrod—which also includes some good footage of the practice going on in the background as he speaks.

As I mentioned yesterday, Troy Stecher is a particularly interesting character this time around—a new free-agent signing, NCAA champion and North Dakota teammate of Brock Boeser's, who's also a B.C. native and spent three years playing hockey in Penticton, earning a national championship with the Penticton Vees in 2012.

Stecher has drawn the blogging assignment for the tournament. You can read his first installment here, where he talks about his time in the Okanagan and what it means to be back in these very different circumstances.

As Jason Botchford of the Vancouver Sun points out in his "Players to Watch" article, Stecher's even smaller than we realized. He's listed as 5'10" and 190 pounds on Hockey DB, but the Canucks' roster sheet has him at 5'8" and 190.

Nevertheless, Trevor Linden is speaking highly of Stecher:

Another interesting tie to the organization: Travis Green's Portland Winterhawks selected Stecher in the WHL bantam draft way back when. "His personality is infectious," Green told Botchford. "I’ve known him since he was 14. You can tell he has a passion for the game and that’s so important."

I'm very curious to see if he can separate himself from his peers on the ice tonight. Botchford says Stecher will skate on the top defensive pairing with Olli Juolevi.

As far as the team's other promising-but-undersized D prospect, Botchford says of Jordan Subban:

Believe it or not, his size — 5-foot-9 — isn’t the reason the Canucks passed on calling him up last season even though he led all Utica blue-liners in scoring.

The Canucks see that he’s got a stout build and is impressively strong. They are in love with his shot, too.

But if they aren’t soon convinced he’s better defensively, and more responsible in his own end, he’ll be passed over yet again this season when Vancouver is looking for injury replacements.

Linden echoed that sentiment on the radio this morning:

As for Cole Cassels, Ben Kuzma of The Province reported earlier this week that he was hampered in his first AHL season after undergoing abdominal surgery following his 2015 Memorial Cup win with the Oshawa Generals.

Cassels says he's now fully healthy and ready to make a bigger impact.

Tonight's game will likely be Cassels' best opportunity to back up his words.

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