Canucks Wrap: Star forward injured already?

In Monday's edition of Canucks Wrap, we’ll be talking the latest Vancouver Canucks news, NHL news, stories, highlights, and more from the last day.

Canucks News

Head coach Rick Tocchet, general manager Patrik Allvin, and the Vancouver Canucks may already be dealing with a key injury just five games into the 2024-25 regular season. Star forward and alternate captain J.T. Miller apparently suffered an injury on the first shift of the game against the Philadelphia Flyers, who were playing in their home opener at the Wells Fargo Center, on Saturday night.

As someone who was there covering the Flyers from the press box, I never saw the injury or whatever it was that happened to Miller, but it was within 10 seconds of the puck being dropped. The 31-year-old Canucks forward did return after a few minutes in the locker room and appeared to carry on playing the rest of the game against the Flyers without any physical restrictions.

Required reading: Dakota Joshua takes the next encouraging step in his recovery

Miller played 17:01 against the Flyers, which was his lowest total ice time of the season by far. His next closest was 17:45 against the Calgary Flames in the season opener on Oct. 9, which the Canucks lost, 6-5 in overtime.

It is worth noting, however, that Tocchet did acknowledge Miller's injury is legitimate, not just a one-off thing.

"He's dealing with some stuff," Tocchet said after the game. "We'll figure it out over the next couple days, but we didn't want him to take draws. . . I expect (Miller to play), but you never know."

So... yeah. Tocchet's comments are not the most inspiring in terms of injury news, but it obviously could be a lot worse.

In some better, more exciting news from the weekend, Canucks defenseman Tyler Myers reached 1,000 NHL regular season games played, which is a prestigious honor that speaks to the 34-year-old's dedication to his craft and longevity as a professional athlete.

As tumultuous as Myers' Canucks tenure has been leading up to this point, he is one more regular season game away from playing the majority of those games as a member of the Canucks.