Blue-line pair can’t wait to play in Ottawa
Both Gudbranson and Hutton will play in front of family and friends in Ottawa
OTTAWA Two Vancouver Canucks blue-liners will return home today at the Canadian Tire Centre.
Erik Gudbranson grew up in Ottawa. Ben Hutton hails from Prescott, about an hour’s drive south of Kanata, the suburban Ottawa home of the Senators’ rink.
And while the blue-line partners have played in Ottawa plenty of times before, both said returning to the nation’s capital always adds a skip and a jump to their stride.
“It’s always so much fun. Pretty much everybody who was with you, from where it started, gets to come out, have a beer and enjoy,” Gudbranson said after the Canucks held a short-but-spirited practice on Tuesday.
“You want to impress friends and family,” he said. “For me it’s having my mom and dad in the stands, it’s just like when you were a kid, you want to impress them.”
It’s also a chance for friends and family to get an up-close look. When he played in Florida, Gudbranson’s games were in the same time zone, making for easy TV viewing, plus he’d visit twice a year. But playing in Vancouver means most of his games now start at 10 p.m. here, too late for most.
The story of how Hutton remade himself over the summer, changing his diet, working out like he never had before, has already been told.
And with the 25-year-old’s new-found fitness leading to the prominent role he’s played this season — after last year’s dog of a campaign — it’s safe to say he’s looking forward to playing in front of family and friends too.
Hutton admitted he doesn’t know exactly how many people are coming to watch on Wednesday. “50, 60,” he guessed. Family and friends have travelled up by the busload in the past. His first National Hockey League game with the Canucks in Ottawa in 2015 saw a cheering section of fans numbering in the triple digits.
The crew may not be as big this year, but getting to play in front of the people who have supported you for so long still gives Hutton a thrill.
“The last year was obviously one of my tougher years of playing hockey. To turn it around, to be in the lineup regularly, it’s been good, it’s turned my confidence around,” he said.
“I’m going to try my best to put a little performance on. I saw some of my buddies last night and they said they wanted a nice performance, so hopefully we’ll give it to them.”
There is one benefit to now making just one annual visit home, Gudbranson joked.
“You only have to deal with the whole ticket fiasco once.”
SUTTER NEARING RETURN
Brandon Sutter took part in another practice. The checking centre has been on the road trip and is clearly nearing a return.
“He’s getting close,” Canucks coach Travis Green said Tuesday. “Every day he’s doing some more battling drills, we’ll push him again tomorrow. He’s a possibility for the road trip. He wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t.”
With back-to-back games here and then Thursday in Montreal, it always seemed unlikely that Sutter would be activated to play for today ’s game, with Green having suggested in the past he’d rather not have players returning from injury play two games in two nights.
So perhaps he dresses Thursday against the Canadiens. Or maybe Green and his staff wait for the final game of the road trip, Saturday in Toronto, for Sutter to play his first game since separating his shoulder at the end of October.
Whenever it is that he returns, the Canucks will have to make a roster move.
Every Canuck on the current roster, with the exception of Elias Pettersson and Brock Boeser, needs to clear waivers in order to be sent to the American Hockey League.
Sutter’s return will mean someone is either put on waivers or is traded.
The most obvious options are probably two defencemen currently sitting out as healthy scratches: Alex Biega and Michael Del Zotto.
Del Zotto, who is an unrestricted free agent in the summer, is assuredly unhappy about his lack of playing time.
Biega, on the other hand, has always been solid in his role as a seventh defenceman.
They also have an extra forward in Tim Schaller, though it looked on Tuesday like there was a good chance the winger would draw back into the lineup, possibly at the expense of Nikolay Goldobin.
Goldobin could conceivably be a candidate for a move, but he’s also the team’s fourth-leading scorer.