The Vancouver Canucks had a couple of injured defencemen back on the ice at Saturday's practice, as Carson Soucy and Guillaume Brisebois rejoined the team. Soucy has been out for over a month since suffering a hand injury blocking a shot against the Toronto Maple Leafs, while Brisebois has missed the entire season after taking a high hit from the Seattle Kraken's Brandon Tanev in the preseason.
Even with their return, however, the Canucks still didn't have a full slate of defencemen. Tyler Myers wasn't on the ice and will miss an unknown length of time, with head coach Rick Tocchet saying he is "week to week" with a lower-body injury.
Myers left Thursday's game against the Los Angeles Kings midway through the third period. His final shift of the game was a short one — just 18 seconds long — and there didn't seem to be any incident that would cause an injury.
It's possible that the injury was suffered on a previous shift and he was testing it on his final shift to see if everything was okay.
On his previous shift on the penalty kill, Myers did seem to pull up and take the weight off his right leg after the Kings scored. To be clear, this is just speculation regarding the nature of Myers' injury and it could be unrelated to this moment.
With Myers out, Mark Friedman is expected to draw back into the lineup for Sunday's game against the Anaheim Ducks. At Saturday's practice, Quinn Hughes and Filip Hronek were reunited on the top pairing, Nikita Zadorov was paired with Noah Juulsen on the second pairing, and Friedman skated with Ian Cole on the third pairing.
Soucy skated as an extra defenceman at practice, while Brisebois did not participate in line rushes.
Tocchet said that he wants to get Soucy some practice time before inserting him back into the lineup.
"You always as a coach make sure he gets a few practices," said Tocchet. "He's a veteran guy, though, I don't think he needs a ton of practice time but you also want to put him in a good spot. Not sure, but he is close."
