The day we've all been waiting for is finally here. Except by all, I mean those of you who actually remembered that the preseason schedule gets underway today. Yay?

Vancouver Canucks vs. Seattle Kraken 

5:00 pm PST; 8:00 pm EST

TV: Streaming on Canucks.com

Radio: No, I think?

The lead up to the beginning of a new season of Vancouver Canucks hockey is set for this evening as the boys are in Seattle to take on the Kraken in the first of a handful of warmups before things get underway for real at home against Calgary on Oct 9th.

As is usually the case in the first half of the preseason schedule, the team being iced tonight is a far cry from what the opening night lineup will be. Veterans Nils Höglander, Filip Chytil, Kiefer Sherwood, Drew O’Connor, Teddy Blueger, Nils Åman, and Pierre-Olivier Joseph will play tonight for the Canucks. Jonathan Lekkerimaki and Arshdeep Bains, both huge parts of that AHL Championship squad in Abbotsford will also be in the lineup tonight.

The defence will also feature the trio of Elias Pettersson, Victor Mancini and Tom Willander, and it will be interesting to see just how many of these guys are in the lineup to start the season. In goal, it's Ty Young and Nikita Tolopilo, expect those guys to split the workload tonight.

There's a lot of pressure on this squad, the new head coach in Adam Foote, and especially the management team, to get this team back into playoff contention after missing the postseason last time around. They're going to need to have some pretty significant seasons from a number of players AND stay healthy in order to give themselves a shot. We'll have our official season preview coming up soon, but in the meantime, remember. It's preseason, don't read too much into it. Unless of course we win. In that case, start planning the f'n parade, baby!

LINEUPS

Courtesy of the Kraken's website, here's what to expect from them tonight:

Projected Kraken lines/pairings (not official):

Nyman-Beniers-Kakko

Schwartz-Wright-Firkus

Sale-Catton-Eberle

Molgaard-O’Brien-Hayden

Dunn-Larsson

Evans-Oleksiak

Olofsson-Fiddler

Daccord

Kokko

And via CanucksArmy.com this is the Canucks lines for tonight's battle:

Projected lineup vs. Kraken:

Höglander-Chytil-Lekkerimäki
Bains-Cootes-Sherwood
O’Connor-Blueger-Klimovich
LaBate-Aman-Stillman

E.Pettersson-Mancini
PO Joseph-Willander
Schuldt-Mynio

Tolopilo
Young

Extra: Alcos

GAME DAY BATTLE HYMN

Bay Area thrash titans TESTAMENT have album number fourteen ready to come out soon, and the latest video from that is our first battle hymn of the new hockey season. The release will be called 'Para Bellum' and is coming out on Nuclear Blast Records Oct 10th. Check out the fantastic animated video for 'Shadow People' (and don't sleep on the first single off this album, either).