The NHL preseason sees dozens of players cut from NHL teams and sent to the AHL. It's a little unusual to then see those players called back up from the AHL during the preseason.
That's what the Vancouver Canucks did on Wednesday, however, calling up six players from the Abbotsford Canucks who had just been cut earlier this week: Arturs Šilovs, Filip Johansson, Max Sasson, Aatu Räty, Linus Karlsson, and Arshdeep Bains.
The call-up comes ahead of the Canucks' preseason game against the Seattle Kraken in Abbotsford and it suggests they want to have some of their AHL stars in the lineup for the hometown fans.
That does mean that some of their NHL stars won't be making the trip. Elias Pettersson, who missed two days of practice with a cold, was on the ice Wednesday morning with a group that won't be making the trip, including his fellow stars Quinn Hughes, J.T. Miller, and Thatcher Demko. The rest of the group was Ian Cole, Noah Juulsen, Teddy Blueger, Phil Di Giuseppe, Conor Garland, and Ilya Mikheyev, who has yet to be cleared to play after his knee surgery earlier this year.
That means the team heading to Abbotsford will be lacking in star power, though Andrei Kuzmenko, Anthony Beauvillier, Pius Suter, Nils Höglander, Carson Soucy, and Filip Hronek will presumably be in the lineup.
As for the called-up players, it's an interesting collection. It doesn't include Vasily Podkolzin, though calling him up for one more preseason game after he clearly didn't make the opening-night roster might be adding insult to injury.
Johansson has yet to play a preseason game for the Canucks, so this will be the first chance for both fans and management to see him in an NHL-lite scenario. The former first-round pick for the Minnesota Wild is heading into his first professional season in North America and is hoping to re-establish himself as a legitimate NHL prospect.
Sasson, Räty, Karlsson, and Bains will all be key components of Abbotsford's offence and one or more of them could see games in the NHL with the Canucks this season. Sasson has skated on a line with Danila Klimovich and Aidan McDonough since the start of the Young Stars prospect tournament, so this will be an opportunity to see what he can do with different linemates.
Wednesday's game will not be televised but the Canucks intend to stream the game on Canucks.com.
