With the calendar just about ready to flip to September, Canucks players are beginning to return to town and get on the ice ahead of the 2021-22 season.
I saw on Thatcher Demko's Instagram that he'd recently been golfing locally with Troy Stecher — at Northview, if I remember correctly.
Here's the first sighting of him on the ice at UBC with goaltending coach Ian Clark — and Jonah Gadjovich, apparently...
It's a comforting sight, with both Demko and Clark now locked up for the long term.
We're still not out of the woods as far as Covid goes, and single-game tickets aren't on sale yet for either the NHL club or the Abbotsford Canucks — although Abbotsford is selling
season-ticket packages. But I'm hopeful that a relatively normal offseason for Demko, and the chance to continue his work with Clark, will deliver big results in net for Vancouver now that he's the bona fide No. 1.
On a personal note, Demko also got engaged at home in San Diego this summer, to his longtime girlfriend Lexie Shaw. She was a
goaltender herself at the University of North Dakota, back in the day.
Congratulations are also in order for Tyler Motte, who posted his engagement announcement on Monday.
If you want to pull out the magnifying glass, here's a shot of the larger group of UBC skate participants.
In addition to Stecher in his Detroit reds, I think we've got Alex Edler standing at the back in his new L.A. Kings black practice duds.
The Canucks have now updated their
roster page with jersey numbers, so it looks like we've got the new No. 77, Brad Hunt, bent over and studying the board — while still wearing the Minnesota Wild socks from his last couple of seasons.
I believe the goalie behind Hunt is B.C. boy Laurent Brossoit, still in his Winnipeg Jets gear even though he's now with Vegas. And the '4' on the helmet of the player in the Flames gear leads me to believe that he's No. 42, Glenn Gawdin of Richmond. Pretty such that isn't Lucic!
Can you pick out anybody else?
Here are the other new jersey numbers, listed on Canucks.com:
• Phil Di Giuseppe - No. 34
• Justin Dowling - No. 73
• Conor Garland - No. 8
• Madison Bowey - No. 4
• Oliver Ekman-Larsson - No. 23
• Brady Keeper - No. 25
• Tucker Poolman - No. 5
• Jaroslav Halak - No. 41
• Spencer Martin - No. 30
It's sort of poetic that Ekman-Larsson will jump straight into Edler's No. 23 jersey, isn't it? It's the number he has always worn. And it seems like, in many ways, he's hopping into Edler's spot on the Vancouver depth chart.
Elsewhere — I'm guessing that we're not going to have any trouble distinguishing the new No. 8, Garland, from Jordie Benn or Chris Tanev. He wore 83 in Arizona. And I'm wishing Tucker Poolman a debut season that evokes more memories of Christian Ehrhoff or even Garth Butcher than of Luca Sbisa or Jason Garrison.
Gadjovich has been wearing 41, so it looks like he had ceded that to the veteran Halak.
To close out today, a quick note on the U20 Four Nations Cup that was held last week. A pair of Canucks 2021 draft picks, goaltender Aku Koskenvuo of Finland and defenseman Hugo Gabrielson of Sweden, are both reported to have had strong outings. Koskenvuo, in particular, was a tournament standout, with shutout performances against both Russia and Sweden.
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