Brandon Sutter is apparently unfit to play.
The 31-year-old skated with his Vancouver Canucks teammates on Monday and Tuesday this week but was notably absent on Wednesday for the team’s daily on-ice session at Rogers Arena.
Justin Bailey joined the main group in Sutter’s place; he’d previously been skating with the spare group of Canucks minor leaguers. There was also a swap on defence, with Guillaume Brisebois skating as the eighth defenceman. Brogan Rafferty skated in that spot on Tuesday; Jalen Chatfield was the eighth on Monday.
Travis Green said Tuesday that that roster spot is very much up for grabs.
It’s not known why Sutter was absent, and the NHL is ordering teams not to reveal why players are absent, instead instructing them to simply state they are “unfit to play,”
Sutter has struggled with groin problems in recent seasons.
And he was hurt twice this season, a groin strain in November that sidelined him for 13 games and then a back injury in December kept him out for 12 more games.
Sutter told Postmedia in May that he didn’t expect he’d be able to skate until he returned to Vancouver last month.
Ferland returns
Micheal Ferland didn’t skate Monday or Tuesday. We didn’t know for what reason — again the league’s “unfit to play” designation leaves the door wide open for idle speculation — but he was part of the minor league group on Wednesday and was a full participant.
“I don’t have a timeline but it is a good sign he’s out there,” head coach Travis Green said about Ferland’s reappearance on the ice.
GM Jim Benning had said Monday he expected Ferland would be back so this wasn’t a total surprise, but still the mind wanders about what his absence could have been about.
The players are being tested every other day for COVID-19; did Ferland possibly return an inconclusive test, leading to him being monitored? Benning’s cautious optimism suggested this isn’t likely the case.
So perhaps he was dealing with some physical ailment from his workouts during the team’s more informal Phase 2 workouts over the past two weeks? Or maybe he was dealing with another cold derived from his kids; he was felled during training camp by a cold he picked up from his daughter, for instance.
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