First Road Trip of Season Begins on Tuesday Night in Tampa Bay

The Vancouver Canucks hit the road for the first time this season and are out east for their next four game nights. Tuesday night will see the Canucks battle with the Tampa Bay Lightning as they begin their road trip with a double dip against the two Floridian teams.

Tampa Bay has only played one game this season and beat the Carolina Hurricanes by a 4-1 count. Nikita Kucherov picked up a hat trick in their season opener and will be the Lighting player to watch on Tuesday.

After a busy summer, the Lightning look a lot different than last season. Their biggest loss was Steven Stamkos, who moved on to the Nashville Predators in free agency.

The top line for the Lightning now sees Kucherov joined by Brayden Point and newcomer Jake Guentzel. The middle-six has well-known names like Cam Atkinson, Brandon Hagel, Anthony Cirelli, and youngster Conor Geekie.

In Canucks news, Tyler Myers took to the ice for practice on Monday after he was helped off the ice in Friday night’s game against the Philadelphia Flyers. Myers is still day-to-day with a lower-body injury but the fact that he is back on the ice so quickly after what looked like a bad injury is great news.

Rick Tocchet said that they “dodged a bullet,” with Myers and the head coach is happy to see him back on the ice.

Quick Hits on the Competition

• Veteran defenceman Victor Hedman is now the captain of the Lightning and will be eating up a lot of minutes in all situations for Tampa Bay.

• Hedman will be paired up with J.J. Moser on the Lightning’s top pairing and their top-four is rounded out with Ryan McDonough and Erik Cernak running the second pairing.

• Cernak is a physical defenceman who led the Lightning backend with 198 hits last season.

• Goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy had a great start to his 2024-25 season; stopping 20 of the 21 shots he saw on Friday night in Tampa Bay’s only game this season.

The Story: Attack the Net and Close Games Out

Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet spoke on Monday about his team needing to attack the net.

Though they are generating the sixth-most scoring chances per 60 minutes at five-on-five in the early stages of the season, the Canucks are in ninth for high-danger chances and want to get in tighter with those scoring chances and be able to make good passes close to the net to generate more grade-A shot attempts.

“We're getting a lot of possession time, which is good. We're not translating [possession time] into a lot of chances or shots. We worked on a few things offensively. When you beat pressure, we need to start attacking the net more. But, as a coach, you can't overload too much stuff. I think that it's important, that you give them a few things, and then you work it out, and then you find something else to work on,” said Tocchet.

The coach has been happy with his team’s starts in the early stage of the season and wants to see his group keep their energy up from the opening puck drop.

Through two games, the Canucks scored five goals in the first period and only allowed one goal against. Carson Soucy spoke about the good starts this season and wants to get back to their strong play in the final frames like we saw last season when the Canucks were 42-1-4 when leading after 40 minutes.

“Coming out, our starts have been pretty good,” said Soucy. “Last year we were pretty good at closing games out in the third period and the last two have kind of gotten away from us, so I think just a full 60 minutes is our focus.”

When and Where to Watch

Tuesday night’s game is a 4:00 pm PT start time, and you can watch the game on Sportsnet or listen to the radio broadcast with Brendan Batchelor on Sportsnet 650.