Elias Pettersson is doing more than carrying the Canucks’ offence right now. He’s also taking a beating for them.
Through 17 games, Pettersson leads Vancouver with 18 points, but that’s only part of the story. He also sits atop all NHL forwards in blocked shots with 24, three more than the next closest forward. At his current rate of 1.41 blocks per game, he’s tracking toward 118 blocks, which would set a new NHL record for a forward since the league began tracking the stat in 2005-06.
That mark currently belongs to Buffalo’s Alex Tuch, who blocked 113 shots in the 2024-25 season.
Pettersson was already close to history a year ago. He finished last season with 108 blocked shots, just behind the record and three shy of Ryan Johnson’s career high of 105 from 2007-08. Pettersson missed eight games because of injury, which kept him from getting to Tuch’s number, but even so, his total still stands as the third-most blocked shots ever by an NHL forward.
The willingness to put his body in front of pucks has long been one of the strongest counters to the idea that he’s stopped caring or stopped competing when his scoring dipped. That argument doesn’t hold up very well when a player is repeatedly volunteering for pain.
Pettersson even lined up in front of empty-net chances last season and dropped into a butterfly to block shots like a goaltender. As one post put it: “I swear, Elias Pettersson missed his true calling as a goaltender. #Canucks pic.twitter.com/EprxGTOQk5”
Of course, the ideal version of Pettersson is the one spending more time attacking than absorbing shots. Blocking pucks is useful, but it’s also a sign of a team that’s spending too much time without the puck.
As Kent Wilson once said, “Blocking shots is like killing rats. Doing it is preferable to not, but if you’re doing it all the time it suggests you have bigger problems.”
And the Canucks do have bigger problems in possession this season. Vancouver is not built to control games right now, and Pettersson’s 48.3 per cent expected goals share at 5-on-5 still shows the Canucks are being outchanced and outshot when he’s on the ice.
So while the team would rather see him driving play in the offensive zone, Pettersson’s shot-blocking habit may keep piling up - and could put a new record within reach by season’s end.
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