Here's a quick look at Friday's on-ice action from the CN Centre in Prince George:
Training camp continues today with more systems work, then the youngsters will hit the ice for an intrasquad game on Sunday.
Assistant coach Glen Gulutzan told Derek Jory at
Canucks.com that Willie Desjardins is with them in spirit, if not in person.
"I don’t know if anybody knows how to clock callers on your cell phones, because he’s in touch with all of us quite often. He certainly has his finger prints on everything we’re doing here."
Here's Bo Horvat's advice to Jake Virtanen on what it'll take to make the team:
"I think he just needs to play his game, do what he’s done to get noticed and get into the situation that he is in right now. I think if he goes and plays his game, has fun with it, plays hard every shift and does what the coaching staff wants him to do, he’ll be fine."
Over at
The Province,
Jason Botchford reports that Sven Baertschi has spent a good part of the summer acclimating to the West Coach lifestyle. He has been in Vancouver since mid-July and become a Grouse Grind fiend.
“It never really got easier,” Baertschi said of the Grind. “The first time I went, it was 55 minutes.
“I had no idea what was coming. I was going up there and I was like, ‘Shit, I’m only a quarter up there?’
“I thought I should have been almost to the top.”
Yeah, been there.
But the times dropped and dropped fast. He went from 55 to 47 minutes to 42.
His last run was 39:40.
Meanwhile,
Ben Kuzma tells us that Chris Higgins also spent the summer in town, but is not a Grind guy.
“I did it once with my wife and I’ll never do it again — I’d rather take the gondola up,” chuckled Higgins.
Here's how Higgins approached his offseason fitness regimen:
“I’m the strongest I’ve been in a number of years as far as the weights I was hitting — I was kind of surprising myself,” said the 32-year-old Higgins. “It’s going to help with the power in my stride. I did a lot of rollerblading. It was so nice in Vancouver this summer that instead of running, I bought a pair of rollerblades and hit the hills a bit on the West Vancouver side. I’m sure a couple of neighbours were freaked out by me.”
This does not sound to me like a guy who's chomping at the bit to waive his no-trade clause.
The Fourth Period has created a handy chart of the no trade and no-movement clauses around the NHL for 2015-16.
I had forgotten that Radim Vrbata has a no-trade as well as Dan Hamhuis, which could add an element of intrigue to any potential trade-deadline deals next spring.
Kuzma also chatted with new arrival Matt Bartkowski, who will be subject to plenty of scrutiny if he sticks on a third pairing with Luca Sbisa once the season starts.
Here's how Bartkowski sees his game:
“We did a lot of boxing out in Boston and not even letting players get to the net,” said Bartkowski. “It’s something I’m very familiar with and something I know I can chip in. And my biggest asset is my feet. I can move the puck up and throw the body around a little bit.”
Bartkowski played just 47 games with the Boston Bruins last season, but once he got back into the lineup in mid-February, he stuck through the stretch run, as Boston desperately tried to secure a playoff spot.
Earlier this week, Brad Marchand and Torey Krug told CSNNE's Joe Haggerty about the trouble in Boston's dressing room last season.
Click here for a look at why Boston made so many offseason changes.
Bartkowski's name doesn't figure directly into the conversation, but the piece does shed some light on the difficult working environment in Boston last season. And perhaps Canucks fans can take a little bit of satisfaction in seeing that the team that beat them out for the 2011 Stanley Cup is also now struggling to figure out how it goes forward from here.
To close today, a look at some of the off-ice activities that the players are engaged in while they're up North. Great to see them out at schools—I know that's on the agenda for the Victoria visit on Monday as well.
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