SAUVE GETS THE CALL

The Vancouver Canucks announced late last night that defenseman Andrew Alberts fractured his wrist in the team’s 3-2 loss in St. Louis. The injury added to an already depleted defense core that features five d-men on the sidelines.

To fill the void on the backend, the Canucks called up a familiar face – Yann Sauve.

The former Saint John Sea Dogs defenseman is expected to play for the top team in National Hockey League this evening when they travel to Minnesota to face the Wild at 9:00 pm AST.

From the Vancouver Province:

It's come to the point where the call-up from the Manitoba Moose is Yann Sauve -who's missed most of the season after being hit by a car in downtown Vancouver before training camp in September, suffering a concussion. Sauve, who turns 21 this week, will join the Canucks in Minnesota today and is slated to play his first NHL game.

Sauve is a stay-at-home type and that likely worked in his favour.

If Sauve plays this evening, he’ll become the first Sea Dog alum to appear in a NHL contest.

It has been an eventful season for the 2006 first overall selection in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League Entry Draft. It started off with him getting hit by a car in downtown Vancouver during Canucks rookie camp in the fall. He was diagnosed with a concussion amongst other bumps and bruises.

“It might have been a French-English thing, I'm not quite sure,” Canucks general manager Mike Gillis said earlier this season, “but he decided to walk the opposite way of everybody else and got hit by a car.”

After a lengthy recovery and some mystery about where the team that took him the second round of the 2008 NHL Entry Draft would send him, Sauve started his season in late November with the East Coast Hockey League’s Victoria Salmon Kings. In eight games, he had two assists and four penalty minutes.

After the brief ECHL stint, Sauve joined the American Hockey League’s Manitoba Moose where he has been playing since his call-up last night. In 20 matches, the Rigaud, Quebec native has three assists and eight penalty minutes.

In four seasons with Saint John, Sauve accumulated 20 goals, 82 assists, 296 penalty minutes, and a plus-14 rating in 251 regular season games. In 39 post-season contests he recorded six goals, 14 assists, 67 penalty minutes, and was a minus-eight.