How the Vancouver Canucks plan to use Elias Pettersson differently this season
The Vancouver Canucks are widely seen as a fringe playoff team entering the 2025-26 season.
If they’re going to be anything more than that, the Canucks will need Elias Pettersson to play like the bona fide No. 1 centre he’s paid to be.
It’s been a while since Canucks fans saw that version of Pettersson, even if he started picking up at the tail end of 2024-25 before injuries ended his season.
Despite more than a year of underwhelming hockey, Canucks players and staff are publicly expressing their belief in him.
“I just see him with a different mindset,” Foote said earlier in the preseason. “And you know what? That’s not necessarily me or the [head coaching] change, it might be just the maturity of himself in general.”
Adding to the equation is whether Pettersson can author a bounce-back season with increased responsibility.
Canucks president Jim Rutherford mentioned during a recent appearance on Sportsnet 650 that Foote plans to use Pettersson in different situations compared to Rick Tocchet.
“Based on what Adam has said in his conversations with Petey, I believe that he’s very comfortable using Petey in all situations,” Rutherford told hosts Dan Riccio and Satiar Shah. “PK, power play, five-on-five, on the ice in the last minute of a period or a game, and I believe that Petey’s looking forward to that challenge.”
It sounds like the Canucks will ask Pettersson to do more this season. (Bob Frid/Imagn Images)
While Pettersson is no stranger to being the Canucks’ top forward at five-on-five and on the power play, he was seldom used on the penalty kill.
The 26-year-old did regularly kill penalties under Tocchet in 2023-24, averaging 1:21 of ice time per game shorthanded. That plummeted last year, as he averaged just 37 seconds per game of shorthanded ice time.
From 2022-23 through 2023-24, Pettersson was tied for third in the NHL with 11 shorthanded points.
In last-minute situations, the Canucks also relied heavily on guys like Pius Suter and J.T. Miller last season. Both of those safety blankets are now gone, meaning Pettersson is probably the go-to guy in terms of facing off against the opposition’s best players, both at five-on-five and towards the end of the game.
We saw that in the Canucks preseason finale, where he spent two-thirds of his even-strength minutes matched up against Connor McDavid.
“I mean, if you go back in his younger days, Petey was a pretty responsible two-way player,” Rutherford said.
“For some reason, he wasn’t used that way, maybe over the last couple of years, but he’s capable of doing it.”
Rutherford also believes that Pettersson is set up to succeed this season, in a way that he wasn’t in 2024-25.
“Petey is in a totally different place than he was a year ago, and he’s done everything he can to prepare himself for the season,” Rutherford said.
“Everything that he was advised to do, he was asked to do, he did. He worked, he got stronger, he looks better. But mentally, he’s just a different guy. A lot more relaxed, a guy you can talk to a lot more now, and he’s excited about getting going.”