In the words of a behatted cartoon dog surrounded by flames, .
Which means, of course, that this is not fine. This is not fine at all. The Canucks' season has relied heavily upon two things: Jacob Markstrom and the Canucks' young stars, who have remained remarkably healthy this season, with Brock Boeser being the lone exception.
Tuesday morning, however, the Canucks announced that Guillaume Brisebois and Jalen Chatfield have been recalled from the Utica Comets under emergency conditions. That meant the Canucks were short a couple defencemen, enabling them to call up a couple players without using any of their official (and limited post trade deadline) recalls.
Sure enough, at Tuesday's Canucks practice, two defencemen were missing from the ice: Quinn Hughes and Tyler Myers.
According to Travis Green, Hughes and Myers are "banged up" and "day-to-day." Given the Canucks' this season, it's hard to know exactly what that means, but the fact that they recalled Brisebois and Chatfield under emergency conditions is concerning. Emergency conditions only apply when the team does not have two goaltenders, six defencemen and twelve forwards available to play.
Losing any two defencemen would be far from ideal for the Canucks, but those two are particularly impactful, especially Hughes. The 20-year-old rookie has been the NHL's top-scoring defenceman since the All-Star break, is fourth on the Canucks in scoring, and is the only defenceman on the Canucks that can reliably help the team out-chance their opposition.
Myers, while not as key as Hughes, still plays a massive role for the Canucks. He plays in all situations — power play, penalty kill, trailing, and leading — and is third on the Canucks in ice time behind Hughes and Alex Edler.
The call up of Brisebois and Chatfield could just be precautionary. Hughes and Myers could still be available to play in Wednesday's game against the Arizona Coyotes, a crucial intra-Division matchup that could play a critical role in the playoff race in the Pacific.
That would either turn the Brisebois and Chatfield recalls in to regular recalls or see one or both of them quickly returned to Utica.
