The Vancouver Canucks wrap up their homestand Sunday evening with a highly anticipated matchup against the Minnesota Wild. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Jonathan Lekkerim\u00e4ki had a two-point game on Thursday against the Detroit Red Wings. He scored his fourth goal of the season and added his fifth assist. Lekkerim\u00e4ki is up to nine points through 12 games and is riding a three-game point streak going into Sunday night. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Quick Hits on the Competition \u00a0<\/p>\n
The Wild enter their Saturday night game in Seattle with a 6-3-2 record before travelling up to face the Canucks on Sunday. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Sunday will be the fourth game of their five-game road trip that began with an overtime loss to the Edmonton Oilers and a regulation loss to the Calgary Flames. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Kirill Kaprizov has been outstanding for the Wild early in the season. He has 11 goals through 11 games played and has scored eight of those goals at even strength. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Matt Boldy is playing alongside Kaprizov on the Wild\u2019s top line, and he leads the team with 51 shots on net. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Quinn Hughes averages 27:25 of ice time per game. He has two goals and 11 assists. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Yakov Trenin has been one of the league\u2019s most physical players over the past few years. He has 51 hits this season. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Jesper Wallstedt is starting between the pipes for the Wild on Saturday in Seattle. That means Calvin Pickard is likely to make just his second start of the season on Sunday in Vancouver. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The Story: Guess Hughes Back in Town \u00a0<\/p>\n
Former Canuck Quinn Hughes returns to Vancouver to face the Canucks for the first time since being traded last season. There\u2019ll be a lot of emotion in the crowd, and it makes Rogers Arena the place to be on Sunday night. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Hughes played 459 games as a Canuck and was named the captain at the beginning of the 2023-24 season. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Head Coach Manny Malhotra said the crowd\u2019s emotion is something his players can build on. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe obviously need to give them something to cheer about, and we\u2019ve seen it firsthand. When the fans are into the game and when we get them on our side early, that can be a major advantage for us,\u201d said Malhotra. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Malhotra says he hasn\u2019t given much thought about the crowd\u2019s reaction to Hughes returning to Vancouver. He did speak about how the Canucks will try to limit Hughes\u2019 offensive abilities. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDefensively, it\u2019s all about taking away time and space. He does a great job of manipulating that and creating pockets where there doesn\u2019t seem to be pockets,\u201d said Malhotra. \u201cWe want to defend in layers, make sure we have an extra layer behind if he does beat somebody.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n
Zeev Buium, Liam \u00d6hgren, and Marco Rossi are in action against the team that drafted them, and \u00d6hgren spoke about how he is excited to get back into the Canucks’ lineup against his former club following being a scratch on Thursday. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey made my dream come true to get drafted, and I played my first game in the NHL. It\u2019s special to play against them. And it\u2019ll be a fun game. It\u2019ll be fun to see Quinn back in Vancouver,\u201d said \u00d6hgren. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Canucks’ Top Performers over the Last Five Games \u00a0<\/p>\n
Jonathan Lekkerim\u00e4ki: 2g-2a-4p \u00a0
Elias Pettersson: 2g-2a-4p \u00a0
Brock Boeser: 1g-3a-4p \u00a0
Linus Karlsson: 2g-1a-3p \u00a0
Arshdeep Bains: 1g-1a-2p \u00a0
Max Sasson: 1g-1a-2p \u00a0<\/p>\n
When and Where to Watch \u00a0<\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s game starts at 7:00 p.m. PT, and you can watch on Sportsnet or listen to Brendan Batchelor\u2019s radio call on KiSS West Coast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Vancouver Canucks wrap up their homestand Sunday evening with a highly anticipated matchup against the Minnesota Wild.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":939804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-939803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=939803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/939804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=939803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=939803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=939803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}