Vancouver Canucks place Suter and Soucy on IR, call up Cole McWard and Nils Aman from Abbotsford

The move to place Carson Soucy on IR doesn’t come as much of a surprise, as the organization shared that Soucy would be out 6-8 weeks with a lower body injury last week. Suter’s move to IR suggests that the “day-to-day” injury he’s been dealing with is going to continue to keep him out of the lineup longer than we thought. The Canucks have sorely missed both players’ presence in the lineup, as Suter brought an offensive touch to his line that Teddy Blueger just hasn’t been able to replicate to this point.

Both Tyler Myers and Mark Friedman exited Wednesday night’s matchup against the Colorado Avalanche with apparent injuries and did not return. McWard, a right shot defenceman, appears as though he could slot into the Canucks’ lineup tonight against the Seattle Kraken. If both Myers and Friedman are hurt, the Canucks could be going with a defence lineup that looks something like this:

Hughes-Hronek
Cole-Juulsen
Hirose-McWard

It’s worth noting that the Abbotsford Canucks are in Calgary right now, which means that this could just be a precautionary move by Vancouver with back-to-back games coming for them.

McWard, 22, appeared in five NHL games at the end of last season after signing with the Canucks out of the NCAA. After a brief stint in the preseason as Quinn Hughes’s partner, McWard has spent all of his first full professional season in the AHL. There, he has recorded one goal and three assists.

The 23-year-old Aman played in 68 games with Vancouver last season, but that was more a testament to the Canucks’ lack of centre depth as opposed to Aman’s abilities, as he’s spent his entire season to this point in Abbotsford following Vancouver’s free agent acquisitions of Blueger and Suter. Aman has tallied 15 points through 15 AHL games this season.

We’ll have a full scenes from morning skate courtesy of Jeff Paterson up soon on the site!