Player Discussion Elias Pettersson - Please, Be Civil

[Hodgy]

It's also harder to generate offense when 3/4 of your shift is spent doing heavy lifting below the dots in your own zone to buttress a bad D, half the time you have to be the one who gets the puck moving out of the zone, you know that you're going to have to support heavy on the backcheck if the play turns around, and odds are you're going to spend another 30s buried in the zone again before you can get a change.

You certainly can't ignore how poor the defense is at moving the puck. And this applies to Miller's struggles as well. But if that was mostly the problem, then you'd expect Miller and Pettersson to look good or better on the powerplay when they are playing with Quinn Hughes. But they don't. They look equally as bad, maybe even worse. And they've looked like garbage on the powerplay for a pretty extended period of time, and in Pettersson's case, for around a year. So its not like a small sample size thing.

Its beyond perplexing with Pettersson at this point. Interestingly, I think the "injury or no injury" debate has become somewhat meaningless because his play has been so poor for so long that it can't even be explained with an injury. Its just inexplicable at this point.

 

[sting101]

49pts in 70 games since he signed the contract.
29 in 38 this year

 

[pitseleh]

You certainly can't ignore how poor the defense is at moving the puck. And this applies to Miller's struggles as well. But if that was mostly the problem, then you'd expect Miller and Pettersson to look good or better on the powerplay when they are playing with Quinn Hughes. But they don't. They look equally as bad, maybe even worse. And they've looked like garbage on the powerplay for a pretty extended period of time, and in Pettersson's case, for around a year. So its not like a small sample size thing.

It’s beyond perplexing with Pettersson at this point. Interestingly, I think the "injury or no injury" debate has become somewhat meaningless because his play has been so poor for so long that it can't even be explained with an injury. It’s just inexplicable at this point.

I’m not sure Pettersson has ever been a great player on the PP - good, maybe. He scored a bunch of goals but I think that was largely him getting teed up by his teammates and he just doesn’t get that time and space any longer. He’s clearly not playing well regardless of the defence but I’m not sure I’d take much away from his PP productivity.

Whereas Miller has been elite on the PP - he is eighth in PP points between 21/22 and 23/24 and most notably third in primary assists behind only McDavid and Kucherov - but has really fallen off this year. That to me is more notable.

 

[Bertuzzzi44]

Pettersson plays better with bigger stronger wingers. Plays incredible on a line with DeBrusk & Boeser but struggles when he has Garland or Lekkerimaki on his wing.

 

[IslandBeast]

It's not like a long term contract to a swede ever hurt us.

49pts in 70 games since he signed the contract.
29 in 38 this year

Wow that's atrocious

This kid is good when he's on but even then he's a 8mil player at best. What an albatross

 

[Bertuzzzi44]

Petey deserves way more of a harder time than Miller because..

1. His cap hit is 1.5x more
2. He was a ghost in the playoffs last year
3. He was bad the first 30 games of this season
4. He’s had maybe 4 great games all year compared to Miller’s 12+

 

[Bgav]

Petey deserves way more of a harder time than Miller because..

1. His cap hit is 1.5x more
2. He was a ghost in the playoffs last year
3. He was bad the first 30 games of this season
4. He’s had maybe 4 great games all year compared to Miller’s 12+

They both have sucked and they both deserve a hard time

 

[Hodgy]

I’m not sure Pettersson has ever been a great player on the PP - good, maybe. He scored a bunch of goals but I think that was largely him getting teed up by his teammates and he just doesn’t get that time and space any longer. He’s clearly not playing well regardless of the defence but I’m not sure I’d take much away from his PP productivity.

Whereas Miller has been elite on the PP - he is eighth in PP points between 21/22 and 23/24 and most notably third in primary assists behind only McDavid and Kucherov - but has really fallen off this year. That to me is more notable.

I agree. But Pettersson, as you say, used to score a lot of one timers. But also scored a fair bit of wrist shots where he'd hold the puck and then pick the corners. We are not really seeing either. And I get that teams make adjustments, and they certainly did to Pettersson, but that happened back during his rookie season or shortly thereafter. And he seem to still find a way to be dangerous after that (i.e., his 100 point season).

But even then, we've seen with some of the great powerplay producers, like Ovechkin and Draisaitl, that you can continue to be productive with a great one timer notwithstanding the fact that everyone and their dog knows its the game plan.

I do acknowledge that the Canucks powerplay in general seems to be rotten, and there are some structural issues to it. And 100% agreed on Miller. So its not just a Pettersson thing. But my point was more that we are seeing these significant offensive struggles from both Pettersson and Miller across all situations rather than just at even strength. And its not just an off the rush thing either as the powerplay demonstrates. Agreed that relatively speaking there has been a bigger dip for Miller . But that's probably partly due to the fact that the powerplay has historically been run through Miller and Hughes, with Pettersson kind of being a trigger man. So statistically it makes sense to see the general failure of the powerplay hurt Miller more than Petterssson. But I think a big part of the struggles of the powerplay are on Pettersson, and I don't know if this is structural/coaching or not. But he's way too static and never seems to be a threat. If you watch Drasaitl who plays the same position he moves way more and plays way more off of McDavid, and it opens up room for their entire powerplay. Of course the Canucks don't have a McDavid though so it isn't a fair comparison.

 

[CanucksSayEh]

49pts in 70 games since he signed the contract.
29 in 38 this year

These numbers are actually flattering, as his goals are waaay down, and doesn't look like it includes the playoffs which were worse.