Preseason starts tonight – Detroit @ Chicago 8:30pm ET. Available on NHLN
Detroit plays in Chicago tonight on the road to start their preseason. Expect a road crew for that one as the Wings’ next game is tomorrow at home and Detroit cares more about selling preseason game tickets at home than in Chicago. Not saying there won’t be anybody worth watching in tonight’s matchup but the unspoken preseason standard is that for the early games, the road teams send the longest shots to play.
Oliver Ekman-Larsson off to strong start with Canucks – Sportsnet
The actual “biggest surprise” of training camp? Defenceman Travis Hamonic’s mysterious situation has turned into an off-ice story to rival the absence of unsigned Canuck free agents Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes.
Re-signed to a two-year, $6-million free-agent contract in July and expected to play a top-four role as Hughes’ defence partner, Hamonic decided not to attend training camp for what the Canucks are calling “personal reasons” after general manager Jim Benning stated last Wednesday that the 31-year-old would be in Abbotsford. Apparently, circumstances changed after Benning’s pre-camp press conference, and Hamonic remains home in Manitoba.
Yeah I don’t care about the OEL angle, the rest of Vancouver’s defensive questions including Hamonic and Hughes are much more interesting to me.