By: Brayden Fengler / December 19, 2024 Elias Pettersson started this 2024-25 campaign off slow to say the least. He continued this trend over from last season, a trend many fans hoped he would buck during the summer.
But without any rash actions from the Canucks and by Pettersson just trying to focus on what matters, he has been able to ramp up his production slowly but surely. He isn’t bringing the house down with his numbers just yet, but he’s been less of a cause for concern for the team.
Pettersson’s name has recently been at the forefront of loose trade rumours. Places such as Utah and Buffalo have been thrown around as potentially interest parties with something to offer the Canucks. But no matter what their offers would initial, at the end of the day there is no trade for Pettersson that the Canucks look good after inking.
Looking ahead to next year, with Pettersson now and into 2025 still a Canuck, what is there to expect from the star, does he have more room to improve?
Pettersson’s Early Season Performance
Pettersson earned a point in his first contest of the season, which saw the Canaucks fall to the Flames in overtime. After this game, unfortunately for Pettersson a point-per-game pace early on would not be in the cards. Pettersson then went three entire games before earning another assist in the Canucks fifth game of the season.
It also wouldn’t be until the seventh game of the year when Petterson earned his first goal, in the team’s contest against Pittsburgh.
Over the first 15 games of the season, which makes up just under half of the games that the Canucks and Pettersson have played so far this season, EP40 only registered two multi-point nights. Both nights in question were during the team’s 13th and 14th games played where Pettersson found himself earning both a goal and an assist in each contest.
Pettersson started the season playing more physically than he is now. Over the first 15 games, Pettersson had multiple strings of games where he would lay more than 2 hits a night or block more than 2 shots a night.
Pettersson has not eclipsed that baseline in either category since Nov 12th. Pettersson’s recent puck possession numbers have not ballooned when contrasting them to the start of the year, so it’s hard to draw a clean compression between why his production has increased and his instances of physical plays has steadied, but there does seems to be a correlation there.
EP40’s Renewed Focus
It was reported just over a month ago that Pettersson removed all social media from his phone. This has no doubt helped the 26-year-old to remove himself from hearing the constant chatter about his performance. Chatter that admittedly websites/ blogs such as this are responsible for.
That is the double-edged sword of an engaged hockey market. There is no telling how much media coverage/ fan speculation about players reaches them directly, but it certainly can’t be easy to switch off in Vancouver.
Choosing to disconnect like this in 2024 can be a good thing, but it can also be isolating, given the nature of how the world works. However if evident by nothing other than his improved performance Pettersson undoubtable made the right call in taking a break from his socials.
How Petey’s Production Has Improved
Pettersson’s deployment has only changed by a margin of 2 seconds a night when considering his first 15 games played to his latest 16. Pettersson has earned 17 points over the last 16 games played making him over a point-per-game player in that period, something he certainly was not to start the year, sitting at 0.6 points per night on average over the first half of the season so far.
Pettersson is now the second-highest-producing Canuck during the latest half of this season, only beaten out by Quinn Hughes. Most of Pettersson’s production has of course come from his ramped-up assists column with 13 to his name over the last 16 contests.
Impressively, all but 4 of his 17 points over this most recent stretch of the season have come during even strength. This is important to note as it points to Pettersson’s ability to produce beyond special team moments when the odds are more in his favour.
Pettersson is clearly finding and keeping chemistry with the likes of Jake DeBrusk and Kiefer Sherwood as he has been deployed with those two the most by this point in the season. That trio has shared the ice together over 20% of the time that Petey is on the ice.
Beyond this group Debrusk, Brock Boser and Pettersson make up Petey’s second most deployed line mates at over 15% of Petey’s time on the ice.
Both line combos have a Corsi-for percentage of about 50%, which is an undoubtedly good sign that the two lines he plays with the most are able to stay on the attack about as much or more than the teams they are facing.
Head Down
As stated up top, there is a lot of speculation right now around Pettersson, as there often is in this market. Be that speculation a potential trade or the elephant in the room, or not in the room, that has been J.T. Miller.
The two stars have had a visibly combative relationship at times, and while the nature of J.T.’s absence from the team during the bulk of November remains unconfirmed there is no denying the overlap of his time away and Pettersson’s improved production.
This is not to say that J.T. is the cause of anything bad or good to come from Petey’s game, but when so much seems unclear as to why Pettersson started slowly improving, and why he started so slow this season in the first place, it does open the door to considering that at least to some degree, there is an a element to Pettersson’s play that J.T. has an impact on.
Pettersson is not out of the woods yet. He still needs to ramp up his individual goals production even if he has been able to boost his overall numbers by generating assists from his team. For the time being Pettersson should just keep doing what he’s doing, because slowly and steadily it does seem to be working for him and the Canucks.