Amid a six-game losing streak, the Vancouver Canucks have not exactly had much to celebrate on an individual level. Leevi Meriläinen has kept them in games in net, Jake DeBrusk, Elias Pettersson and Jonathan Lekkerimäki have driven the offence, and yet the clearest bright spot may be the rise of defenceman Elias Pettersson.
He opened the season on the third pair, logging somewhere between 14 and 17 minutes a night. Now he has worked his way onto the top pairing with Filip Hronek, and that climb has come with a boost in trust from new head coach Manny Malhotra. Zeev Buium’s early struggles helped create the opening, but Pettersson has done plenty to force the issue himself.
The turn started to show in Game 4 against the Vegas Golden Knights. Against a heavy Vegas team, he kept playing through contact, used his frame to buy time in his own zone, and handled the puck well enough to help clear danger. He positioned his body between the forechecker and the puck, then made the right reads to get the Canucks out.
The scoring touch has also arrived, and in a hurry.
He scored in Game 3 against the Calgary Flames on a four-on-four sequence. He then buried a shorthanded goal off the rush against the New York Rangers in Game 7. Most recently, he found the net again against the Florida Panthers in another four-on-four situation.
There’s a pattern there, and it looks tied to the way Malhotra wants the Canucks to play. During training camp, Malhotra’s offensive zone structure asked defencemen to pinch up, with forwards rotating back to cover the point.
All three of Pettersson’s goals have come when he pinched down into the zone or jumped into the rush. It fits the system, and it has paid off for him.
The eye test is one thing. The numbers are another, and they are loud.
Among Vancouver’s regular six defencemen, Pettersson leads the blue line with three goals. He is one shot on goal behind Hronek with 10, ranks second to Luke Schenn in hits with 17, and averages the fewest giveaways per 60 at 2.6.
He also sits at the top of the Canucks in plus/minus at plus-six, which is three better than the next-best mark on the roster, Paul Cotter’s plus-three. Pettersson is one of only five regular Canucks who are plus players this season, and he is tied for second on the team with 14 blocked shots.
The deeper numbers are even more striking. At 5-on-5, Pettersson leads Vancouver’s regulars in Corsi For Percentage at 55%, Fenwick Percentage at 55.9%, Shots For Percentage at 51.4%, Goals For Percentage at 71.4%, Expected Goals For Percentage at 51.5% and Scoring Chances For Percentage at 53.8%.
He is the only regular Canuck above 50% in Corsi For, Shots For, Expected Goals For and Scoring Chances For. In plain terms, Vancouver creates more than it gives up when he is on the ice, and no other lineup regular can say the same.
The caveat, of course, is that he started the season in a sheltered role. But even that does not tell the whole story.
He was plus-two in Game 2 against the Edmonton Oilers when the Canucks allowed nine goals, plus-one in Game 5 against the Carolina Hurricanes when they allowed seven, and plus-two in Game 7 against the Rangers when they allowed six. He stayed out of the 5-on-5 goals against in those three games, even as the Canucks surrendered 13 such goals combined.
And it is not as if his production has been inflated by soft deployment. Pettersson has the lowest offensive zone start percentage on the team at 27.7%, while also leading the regulars in defensive zone starts at 45.6% at 5-on-5. He is doing it while averaging the fifth-fewest minutes per game among Vancouver’s six regular defencemen.
For a team in a six-game skid and sitting atop the league in goals against with 41, those are remarkable numbers. The 22-year-old defenceman leads the Canucks in the metrics that matter most, even though he has not yet recorded a 5-on-5 point this season. If the offence starts to come, his numbers could climb even higher.
It has been a special beginning for Junior. Last season, Filip Hronek was the defender thriving in Adam Foote’s system. This season, in Manny Malhotra’s world, it has been Elias Pettersson who has taken off.
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