We’re just one day away from the official start of the NHL’s preseason calendar, with a unique slate of games scheduled for tomorrow. In addition to the Boston Bruins paying a visit to the Philadelphia Flyers, the Arizona Coyotes and St. Louis Blues will face-off against one another from Wichita, Kansas in a neutral-site contest. Perhaps most interesting are the Toronto Maple Leafs and Ottawa Senators, who seem to have pulled a page right out of the baseball playbook with the team’s playing a split-squad, day-night doubleheader including a 1:00 pm and 7:00 pm puck drop in Toronto. With all that action, there are several notes from around the league worth mentioning, primarily related to the opening of camp and the beginning of games, which we will keep track of here:
- It appears the Arizona Coyotes have sent 2022 first-round pick Maveric Lamoureux back to juniors ahead of training camp (link). Given the defenseman’s age and raw skillset, as well as Arizona’s position in their rebuild, it wasn’t likely Lamoureux was going to make a major impact in camp and the team likely felt he was best served by heading back to the Drummondville Voltigeurs now rather than later.
- Also sent back to juniors was Boston Bruins prospect Brett Harrison (link). A third-round pick in 2021, Harrison may have had the opportunity to raise eyes in training camp with Boston, however the forward projects to be a standout with the Oshawa Generals this season after tallying 61 points in 65 games last season. Oshawa kicks off its 2022-23 regular season in Barrie this Thursday.
- A number of players have been officially activated off of injured-reserve today. Though many of these are not a surprise, some did come with question marks and in the wake of the recent injury updates around the league, particularly Sean Couturier of the Flyers, not everything can always be taken as a given. The Pittsburgh Penguins activated recently-signed forward Drake Caggiula (link). Moving out west, the Vancouver Canucks have activated forward Nils Hoglander and defenseman Tucker Poolman off of IR (link). In the desert, the Vegas Golden Knights activated forwards Brett Howden and Reilly Smith (link).
Huh. Split-squad preseason games used to be a fair bit more common. I remember going to a preseason game at Avon Old Farms about thirty years ago between a Whalers’ rookie squad and a split-squad from the Bruins (the other half of the team was playing against a similar split at a training camp in Ontario the same day).