Scenes from practice: Canucks give first glimpse of power play units

The second group featured mostly veterans along with a couple of key prospects in Braeden Cootes and Jonathan Lekkerimäki who skated on the same line with Evander Kane. 

These were the second group lines on Tuesday:

A peek at the power play

Today’s practices also included special teams work for the first time in camp. Of note, in the second group of the day, Adam Foote may have tipped his hand when it comes to his thinking on the team’s first unit power play for the regular season. The coach had Quinn Hughes, Elias Pettersson, Brock Boeser, Jake DeBrusk, and Evander Kane working as a grouping with Pettersson setting up on the right side boards, Boeser in the bumper, DeBrusk at the net front with Kane on the left side and Hughes manning the point.

As a nod to his strong camp, the rookie Cootes was deployed as part of the second power play unit along with Kiefer Sherwood, Jonathan Lekkerimäki, Filip Hronek and Sawyer Mynio.

In the Abbotsford game group, look for Sasson, Bains, Karlsson, Kravtsov and Mancini to form one power play unit while Chytil, Räty, Höglander, Willander and Kudryavtsev will likely make up the other.

Garland got the day off

Veteran Conor Garland was absent from Tuesday’s sessions. Foote said that Garland, who was originally slated to play on Wednesday, was battling through something minor and that if it was the season opener, the feisty forward would be good to go. But with a condensed schedule through training camp and with an eye toward the regular season, Garland was given Tuesday off and now likely will not suit up in Abbotsford.

What we heard

Adam Foote on taking a cautious approach to players like Garland dealing with minor tweaks in the preseason: “I’m a big believer this year with the condensed Olympic year, this is a process starting now that we want to make sure we do the right thing with maintenance with certain players so that we don’t get caught.”

Foote on providing some clues about what he’s thinking on the power play: “Yeah, who knows? We’ve got Garly there, too. We’ve got to see what happens. I just like once in a while at practice I think it gets everyone going. It gets guys some confidence and some touches early and it really picks up practice.”

Victor Mancini on his strong camp and his chances of making the opening night roster: “It’s all up to me. I’ve just got to enjoy the process, take it day by day, be a good guy off the ice and work as hard as you can on the ice.”

Max Sasson on heading back to Abbotsford to play a game for the first time since last June’s Calder Cup championship: “We were all talking about that before the preseason about how cool it would be to all play together in that game. Seeing the line-up come out today and me, Bainsy, Karly, Rats, Kudryatsev and Mancini — all the guys — I think we’re all really pumped to be back in the Abby Centre with a cup under our belt and hopefully a warm welcome.”