Player Discussion Elias Pettersson Talk | Also Chiropractors, the Medical Staff, and You

[credulous]

Meanwhille Petey gets to play with f***ing Lafferty, Mikheyev or Sprong, and people are up in his ass about not being able to produce as well as someone who gest to play with Leon f***ing Draisaitl as a winger.

If you look at last year's line-ups, there's not a single all-star calibre center that has played with a worse set of wingers than Petey had. He's the only center that doesn't get to play with wingers of his own calibre.

it's criminal the best they can come up with for pettersson is debrusk or sherwood. of course he looks bad playing with those stiffs

 

[kanucks25]

Miller went pretty much a full year being bad during the Covid season.

He also had a terrible 50 game stretch of poor defensive performances in the 2022-2023 season until Tocchet arrived. Meanwhile Pettersson (and if you want references of the games I’m talking about I can give them to you) single-handedly won us games we had no business being in. That whole year he was an absolute two-way beast and finished with Selke votes on a bottom league team. Yet somehow this fanbase selectively ignores this fact.

The last 3 years his most consistent linemates have been: Mikheyev, Lafferty, Kuzmenko, Hoglander, Chiasson, Beauvillier, Sprong, Podkolzin, and now Debrusk. No other $11M player has linemates anywhere close to this level. Yet Kuzmenko, Mikheyev, Beauvillier have all had or were projected to have CAREER seasons playing beside Pettersson, and I’m not even counting Hoglander who himself also had a career year but admittedly played up and down the line up.

Petey has had 5 5+ point games. Draisaitl and Kucherov have had 6. Mackinnon 7. McDavid/Crosby/Malkin have more than 8.

He has 413pts in 407 games. there are only 11 players with a career PPG at the moment in the NHL.

I agree the last 40 games (6g, 17a, 23pts) he’s been dogshit. Tendinitis, contract, mental/confidence etc has played a large part in his current struggles, but the amount of disrespect he’s had by our fanbase is completely and disproportionately disingenuous.

The number of people who think we should trade Pettersson is quite frankly insane.

This is a player, who in a down year last season, still put up 89 points and was top 20 in the league in scoring. All this while playing as you said, with the likes of players like Mikheyev and Lafferty. Petey doesn't even get to play with the best winger on this team.

Meanwhile look at who other top centers get to play with.

Hughes gets to play with Bratt.

Hintz gets to play with Robertson.

Matthews gets to play with Marner.

MacKinnon gets to play with Rantanen.

Barkov gets to play with Tkachuk.

Point gets to play with Kucherov.

McDavid gets to play with Draistaitl.

Every single other All-star calibre center in this league gets to play with an All-star caliber winger.

Meanwhille Petey gets to play with f***ing Lafferty, Mikheyev or Sprong, and people are up in his ass about not being able to produce as well as someone who gest to play with Leon f***ing Draisaitl as a winger.

If you look at last year's line-ups, there's not a single all-star calibre center that has played with a worse set of wingers than Petey had. He's the only center that doesn't get to play with wingers of his own calibre.

It is true that Pettersson has been an excellent two-way player for the Canucks for the majority of his career.

It is also true that since, particularly since the start of last season, the quality of wingers he's had to play with has been very poor.

But I think most rational people are taking those things into account and only criticizing his play from the point it started to fall which is about the final quarter of last season and into the playoffs.

They tried the lotto line for a bit last season, that didn't really work. They put him between Garland and Joshua who made pretty much any center they played with look good, that didn't really work. Small sample size, but Debrusk has looked like the most dynamic offensive player on that line so far. Pettersson plays on the 1st unit powerplay with all our best players and is essentially a non-factor there. The PP almost always runs through Miller and Hughes over the 12M guy and nobody will ever question this because why would you? It just makes sense the way Pettersson has been playing.

The point is: this has everything to do with Pettersson's individual play and nothing to do with his linemates or his history. The other guys that have been mentioned that are at the same pay grade - McDavid, Draisaitl, Kucherov, Mackinnon, etc. - you are terrified every time they hop over the boards even if they flanked by two ECHLers. You know that every time they touch the puck, there's a real possibility they do something special. Pettersson is so far away from that level right now, it's scary. I'm not willing to bet right now that he will never be that type of dynamic player ever again, but I also don't blame anyone for worrying about it given it's been almost half a season's worth of games now.