Vancouver Canucks lines vs. Edmonton Oilers (Oct. 1, 2026)
Home ice was not good to the Vancouver Canucks last season.
The Canucks had a league-worst 9-27-5 record on home ice in the 2025-26 season — five fewer wins than the next-worst team. They didn’t give the fans at Rogers Arena many reasons to cheer.
They’re looking to change that this season, starting with their home opener on Thursday night, and the Canucks are excited to show their fans that things will be different.
“The excitement of being back in front of our home crowd for the home opener is a big boost for the guys,” said head coach Manny Malhotra. “Obviously, it’s nice to sleep in our own beds and have just a normal game-day preparation.”
They’ll be facing the same team they beat on Tuesday, the Edmonton Oilers, who will be hungry for revenge. But head coach Manny Malhotra also isn’t resting on any laurels from their overtime win in the season opener.
“It’s obviously good to come off a win and be able to critique your game after a win,” said Malhotra. “But as we went through it, there’s obviously a lot of things within our game that need to be cleaned up.
“We discussed those things this morning just to give ourselves a better opportunity to not spend as much time in D-zone and give them the opportunities they did… Game One was nice to get under our belt, but it’ll be a whole different animal tonight.”
Vancouver Canucks projected lines
It’s fairly unusual for a team to change up the lines after a win, especially at the very beginning of the season. Sure enough, the lines the Canucks showed in Thursday’s morning skate were identical to those that took the ice on Tuesday.
Here are the Canucks’ projected lines:
Jake DeBrusk – Elias Pettersson – Jonathan Lekkerimäki
Liam Öhgren – Marco Rossi – Brock Boeser
Drew O’Connor – Max Sasson – Linus Karlsson
Arshdeep Bains – Paul Cotter – Brendan Gallagher
Zeev Buium – Filip Hronek
Jamie Oleksiak – Tom Willander
Elias Pettersson – Luke Schenn
Kevin Lankinen
Leevi Meriläinen
Elias Pettersson scored one goal in the season opener and also led the Canucks in faceoff percentage, albeit at an even 50 per cent. The rest of the team went 12-for-36.
“Collectively, we can be better on draws,” said Malhotra, who was a faceoff ace as a player. “Centres will have a better sense of their timing, and we’ll need to dig in there. It’s not just on our centres — our wings need to do a much better job of coming up with loose pucks and winning those edge battles.”
Malhotra also discussed the reasoning behind naming a whopping six alternate captains for this season, including a few younger players.
“The idea behind our leadership group is to empower more guys within our room to have a voice,” said Malhotra. “The new guys that have been given ‘A’s are the type of guys that lead by example and do all the things that we’re preaching to our group.”
The Canucks’ starting goaltender is expected to be Kevin Lankinen.
Edmonton Oilers projected lines
As might be expected after losing to the projected last-place Canucks in their home opener, the Oilers made some changes to their lineup.
It wasn’t just the loss, however. The Oilers have yet another injury.
Already dealing with injuries to Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Jason Dickinson, Matt Savoie, and Frederik Andersen, they will be without top-line winger Zach Hyman on Thursday night.
The injury reportedly occurred in the Oilers’ final preseason game, but he pushed through it to play in the season opener. Now he’s expected to be out for approximately two weeks.
Without Hyman, the Oilers are loading up their top line with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.
Here are the Oilers’ projected lines:
Vasily Podkolzin – Connor McDavid – Leon Draisaitl
Max Jones – Colton Dach – Kasperi Kapanen
Alex Formenton – Owen Michaels – Mathieu Joseph
Isaac Howard – Joshua Samanski – Trent Frederic
Mattias Ekholm – Evan Bouchard
Ryan Shea – Connor Murphy
Jake Walman – Shakir Mukhamadullin
Devon Levi
Tristan Jarry
Hyman was instrumental in a couple of Oilers goals in their home opener, as he screened Lankinen in front of the net. With Hyman out, that task will fall to Vasily Podkolzin on the top line. Podkolzin scored two goals in the season opener, including one from right on top of the crease.
The Oilers’ starting goaltender is expected to be Devon Levi after Tristan Jarry gave up six goals on Tuesday night.