The Canucks Need to Treat Elias Pettersson Better
Elias Pettersson is the best player on the Canucks, and they’re wasting him.
It has been apparent since his electric sophomore season with the club that there is no player on the team better at driving play than the young Swedish phenom. He’s had his ups and downs and had a little trouble adjusting to life in an encumbering media market, but when he’s on his game, he is unstoppable. It is no exaggeration to say his two-way results in 2019/20 made him a deserving hart trophy candidate. Centering J.T. Miller and Brock Boeser, he lead the aptly-named lotto line to dominance even against the best competition the league had to offer. We saw what Pettersson could do when deployed in a matchup role even with subpar defensive wingers, so why is it that the current coaching staff refuses to use him in a high-leverage role?
Pettersson and his line were used sparingly in game one against Edmonton’s death star first line featuring Connor McDavid. Instead, head coach Bruce Boudreau elected to use the newly extended J.T. Miller as his matchup centerman to a disastrous end.
Miller ended up being on the ice for all 5 goals against in the game while Pettersson had a staggering xGoal% of 88 at evens according to moneypuck.com. Of course, one game doesn’t paint a full picture of a player’s ability or their overall impact, but it’s a microcosm of the coaching staff’s misplaced trust in Miller as a two-way driver, and, conversely, their lack of trust in Pettersson.
Boudreau’s choices for Pettersson wingers have been perplexing as well. He’s essentially being treated as the third center behind Bo Horvat and the aforementioned Miller. As such, his wingers are not the type that he deserves to play with. For the team’s first two games, Pettersson played alongside Andrei Kuzmenko and Nils Hoglander, the latter being swapped for Curtis Lazar in game 3 versus Washington. While Kuzmenko has a scintillating release on his snap shot, his skating was noticeably mediocre in training camp and he has yet to prove he’s an effective offensive driver. On the other side, Hoglander barely made the team out of training camp, and while he possesses skill and motor that are attractive to the eye, his finishing issues have graduated from bad luck to a legitimate concern. Lazar is simply a bottom 6 defensive forward and has no place alongside a playmaker as effective as Pettersson. Ilya Mikheyev’s imminent return will almost certainly shake up Boudreau’s line combinations, but the message has been sent: the team simply does not seem to recognize Pettersson’s excellence, and if they do, they’re actively wasting it.
It is understandable that coaching — and perhaps even management — don’t want to play Miller and Pettersson on the same line despite their previous successes together. They want to spread the talent in the lineup out as much as they can and perhaps want to recoup their investment in Miller as best they can by playing him exclusively at center. Still, there are very talented forwards in the top 6 that Pettersson would surely be a better fit with. Conor Garland is similar to Pettersson in the way that he makes up for an unintimidating frame with intelligence and skill, and the combination of the two could make their line a difficult matchup for anyone the league threw at them. Add on a guy like Mikheyev who is speedy on the forecheck or a bigger guy like Vasily Podkolzin and you could easily round out a line that would score constantly and get scored on sparingly at 5 on 5.
Fortunately, Boudreau seems to recognize Pettersson’s prowess on the PK. According to naturalstattrick.com, he ranks 3rd among forwards in terms of 4 on 5 TOI. Still, considering how his presence near singlehandedly turned the team’s abysmal penalty kill around last season, why isn’t he being deployed more? Some teams don’t like using their offensive dynamos on the PK, which is fair, but the Canucks are clearly not one of those teams as 3 of their top point scorers from last season are in the top 6 in penalty kill minutes played. He’s not the best faceoff guy on the team but he more than makes up for it by being so intelligent shorthanded (as I’m writing this he perfectly set up Bo Horvat for a brilliant shorthanded goal against Columbus).
Back in 2018 during Pettersson’s rookie season, then Jets head coach Paul Maurice had a quote that tells you everything you need to know about Pettersson. “…the way he moves and finds himself space,” remarked Maurice, “his hockey IQ is up there with the likes of Laine’s shot and McDavid’s speed.” On top of his deadly shot and dazzling puck-handling ability, Pettersson’s instincts and feel for the game are legitimately generational. If the Canucks want to be anything close to resembling a Stanley Cup contender, they need to maximize the talents of their most dominant player.
