It's Jonathan Lekkerimäki time in Vancouver.
With Brock Boeser still out indefinitely — not day-to-day as was erroneously reported on Monday — the Vancouver Canucks put out the call to the farm team for their top prospect. Lekkerimäki will make his NHL debut on Tuesday night against the Calgary Flames.
Lekkerimäki was the 15th overall pick in the 2022 NHL Entry Draft and just made the jump from Sweden to North America this season. The 20-year-old winger is off to a hot start with the Abbotsford Canucks, with 5 goals and 7 points in 7 games, with his five goals all coming in his last five games.
He's also piling up the shots, with a whopping 39 in 7 games, an average of 5.6 shots per game. To be clear, that's shots on goal — his rate of shot attempts is even higher. That's music to the ears of the Canucks, who are 21st in the NHL in shots per game this season.
"My role on the team is to play offence and shoot lots, so I try to do my best," said Lekkerimäki.
The one blemish on his stat line is his plus/minus, which sits at an ugly minus-8. In his defence, Abbotsford has been bleeding goals against this season with a few lopsided losses. Plus/minus can be a misleading statistic and it may not be an accurate reflection of Lekkerimäki's defensive play. For instance, two of the goals contributing to that negative plus/minus were into an empty net.
According to Rick Tocchet, the team is happy with his progress in his game.
"He's progressing at a really high level down there," said Tocchet. "From what I've been told, it's obviously scoring goals, but making the little plays and his play without the puck. Because I think that's why he went down there, just to round out his complete game and I think he's really taken each game and developed himself into the complete player that he's trying to be."
It's expected that Lekkerimäki will step right onto the Canucks' top line alongside J.T. Miller, which is interesting considering that Miller is coming off his worst game of the season. Lekkerimäki has a knack for finding soft spots in opposition coverage and Miller is an excellent playmaker — could there be a fit there or will Lekkerimäki's style of play fail to mesh with Miller's more straight-ahead, north-south style?
Whether the line clicks or not, it will still be exciting to see Lekkerimäki make his NHL debut.
"I'm going to try to enjoy the moment and have fun," said Lekkerimäki, adding, "[Miller] is a great guy, so it's going to be fun to play with him...He's a great player, he knows how to pass the puck. Every small detail, he does everything right out there."
Lekkerimäki's debut will come against a Flames team that got off to a soaring start this season, winning their first four games, but has since started to fall back to earth. They've lost seven of their last ten games, though they did take a couple of those games to overtime and earn a point.
The Flames will be playing on the second half of back-to-back games, having beat the Los Angeles Kings 3-1 on Monday night.
Vancouver Canucks projected lines
With Lekkerimäki joining the top line, there will be changes elsewhere in the lineup as well. Dakota Joshua is not expected to play, with the Canucks calling Arshdeep Bains back up from Abbotsford in his stead.
Here are the projected lines based on Monday's practice, as they did not have a full morning skate on Tuesday:
Conor Garland will re-join Elias Pettersson, bumping Nils Höglander back down to the fourth line.
The Canucks' experiment with 11 forwards and 7 defencemen in their last game was disastrous, so expect the usual six defencemen on the blue line. Vincent Desharnais had a tough night against the Edmonton Oilers; expected a renewed focus on boxing out in front of the net, as he was likely read the riot act after that game.
The Canucks' starting goaltender is expected to once again be Kevin Lankinen, despite giving up seven goals to the Oilers in his last start. That's a big vote of confidence in the netminder, who has been fantastic other than that game, but it does raise the question of when Arturs Silovs will get back in the net.
Silovs went down to the AHL to get a start for the Abbotsford Canucks on Sunday and was solid, making 23 saves on 25 shots for a .920 save percentage in a 4-2 win.
Calgary Flames projected lines
The Flames don't have a lot of top-end scoring, with defenceman Rasmus Andersson leading the team in scoring with 11 points in 16 games. They are, however, getting scoring throughout their lineup and can play some suffocating defence when they're on their game.
You can likely expect the Flames to run the same lines as their game against the Kings on Monday night, which the team celebrated as one of their most complete games of the season:
Connor Zary - Nazem Kadri - Yegor Sharangovich
Jonathan Huberdeau - Martin Pospisil - Andrei Kuzmenko
Blake Coleman - Mikael Backlund - Matt Coronato
Ryan Lomberg - Kevin Rooney - Justin Kirkland
Kevin Bahl - Rasmus Andersson
MacKenzie Weegar - Daniil Miromanov
Tyson Barrie - Brayden Pachal
Dan Vladar
Dustin Wolf
The Flames' starting goaltender is expected to be Dan Vladar after Dustin Wolf got the start for the Kings and came just a few minutes away from posting his first career shutout.
Goaltending has been a strength for the Flames, with Vladar and Wolf splitting starts equally. Wolf leads all rookie goaltenders with a .913 save percentage, while Vladar's .906 save percentage is comfortably above league average.
