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I Just Don’t Know About Petey Anymore

By: Brayden Fengler / February 27, 2025

In late September, as I set up my auto-draft preferences for one of the (far too many) fantasy leagues that I’m in, I felt compelled to do something that I had never done before. After re-ranking the players that I was most interested in drafting, I then looked to the other side of the screen, to consider if there were any players that I didn’t want to draft.

After moving a few injured players onto the list, I then found myself hovering over Elias Pettersson.

I don’t pretend to be an NHL GM, but I do pretend to be a GM in fantasy, whatever gut feeling that directs those decisions came over me at that moment and I moved the perfectly healthy Elias Pettersson over to my “do not draft list”. I don’t get much right in fantasy, but with this NHL season nearing it’s end, I can say that I got that right.

Where Are We With Pettersson?

I started to write an article like this back in November, after an opening month of the season that left a lot to be desired from EP40, with just five points in 12 games played. But then in early November, Pettersson had two back-to-back multi-point games, the first at home against Edmonton on November 9th and the second coming a few days later against Calgary.

Including those two contests and over the following ten, Pettersson earned 18 points, and it seemed that Petey was “back”. Little did I know, there was a lot more turmoil to come this season for Elias Pettersson.

One J.T. Miller saga and a Four Nations break later, it’s hard to see where the Canucks go from here with Pettersson’s performance still dragging. It is almost March, Pettersson’s last multipoint outing came in December. We here at StadiumChinatown have covered Petey’s slumps in the past, always trying to maintain positive spin, trying often to cite the paths out of the darkness that the player could find.

As young as Pettersson is, he is old enough in NHL terms to point to decent sample sizes of games/ stretches when he has been exceptional, and it has always stood to reason that that player still exists. But we may be at a point where those stretches, those sample sizes are shrinking in the rearview, making it harder to justify how long the Canucks can wait for him to become a dominant force on the team.

Petey’s Current Performance

Elias Pettersson’s current performance is that of an NHL player, but not an NHL player making the take home of $11.6M. In a recent conversation with Ian MacIntyre, Pettersson stated that he has found “it’s more annoying dealing with the media.” when MacIntyre asked him about the challenges surrounding his scoring drought.

Unfortunately for Petey, dealing with the media is factored into that $11.6M, so the player simply needs to find away around that issue of his.

Pettersson is 196th in the league in scoring and 247th in faceoff win percentage, categories that the centreman has been much more competitive in before. On the Canucks alone, at a glance, it looks like Pettersson is doing okay, tied for third in points with Jake Debrusk, and Brock Boeser at 35 points on the year.

But in reality, the team as a whole is simply underperforming and Pettersson is performing far closer to what can be expected out of depth pieces. Conor Garland had 34 points before last nights game now sits second on the team in overall points with 36.

That is great for Garland, but not for the Canucks. Compared to the team’s one and only elite player right now, Quinn Hughes who sits with 60 points on the year, Pettersson is far from matching that

To make matters worse Pettersson, Debrusk and Boeser are not only tied with each other but are tied in points with J.T. Miller, not J.T. Miller’s overall points total this season, but just J.T. Miller’s Canucks points total. Miller hasn’t played for the team in seven games being traded at the end of January.

On paper, the team made the right call by trading Miller and keeping Pettersson around, and formally removing Pettersson from trade considerations shortly after Miller left. But next year, if this is Pettersson, if his underperformance touches three seasons by that point, will it not seem like the Canucks should’ve moved on from both?

Pettersson Can Be Good

It can be hard to imagine, but Pettersson has been an exceptional player for this team, so despite his current performance having shown little signs of improvement with each passing day, it’s easy to understand why the Canucks have a hard time walking away from that potential.

As mentioned up top he had a brief flicker of his former self over a handful of games at the end of 2024. But unfortunately the heights of Pettersson’s 2022-23 102-point season seem beyond fictional at this point.

Is it possible for Pettersson to get back to his former self? It doesn’t seem like it, at least not right now. EP40 has had so much runway and just can’t take off. As I see it, the one hope to hold onto is hoping for him to have a productive and rejuvenating off season that will allow him to bounce back next year.

If perhaps a lingering injury has been bothering him this year, and the J.T. Miller stuff has simply mentally set him up for failure for the season, maybe one more off-season to completely reset all of that, will bring back the Pettersson this team expects. It’s scary to think what would happen otherwise.

What Do the Canucks Do?

We are approaching a situation where the longer teams see Pettersson underperform the harder his price is to justify should they want to entertain the trade market again. The Canucks can always try and sell from the “he just needs and new environment angle”, but even that approach takes a beating the longer his slump lasts.

On a recent Canucks Conversation Podcast, David Quadrelli and Harman Dayal discussed the concept of Pettersson having “the yips“, and explored the idea, that maybe this is simply the end of the line for Pettersson at the level he has previously been used to. The yips implies, a sudden loss of long proven talent, that the athlete in question simply can not get back.

As ridiculous as that can sound in theory, in reality it’s hard to say that that idea can’t be entertained to explain what Pettersson is going through. Are we at the point where Pettersson’s confidence in his ability to play in the NHL is fractured beyond repair? The answer I think, at least right now, is no, but it is a soft no, another season like this, and I think I would feel differently about coming to that conclusion.

Ultimately whether it comes to this or not I think the Canucks need to more seriously than ever prepare for a world where they may have to eat some of EP40’s contract.

Not to say that Pettersson is a Loui Eriksson type, but how long did the Canucks keep him around hoping things would be different, hoping something that he once had would snap into place on this team? Too long. How long can the Canucks afford to keep Pettersson on the team or in the line-up at his current pace of play and price? Not much longer.