Elias Pettersson's breakthrough, how the Canucks' new wingers have fit and more

It was a game that the Vancouver Canucks were expected to win, especially against a permissive defensive opponent playing in the second leg of back-to-back games.

That context, however, doesn’t diminish how impressive it was to watch them attack in full flight, burying the Pittsburgh Penguins under a sheer avalanche of rush goals across a dominant eight-minute stretch of the second period on their way to a 4-3 win that wasn’t quite as close as the final score suggested.

In unpacking an impressive Canucks performance and some of the key subplots, we figured we’d open our notebook and discuss Elias Pettersson’s breakthrough, how Erik Brännström can stay in the lineup and how Vancouver’s new free-agent additions on the wing have fit in through seven games this season.

Pettersson’s breakthrough and chemistry with Garland

When Pettersson uncorked a vintage bar-down shot to score his first goal of the season on Saturday night, it must have been a huge weight off his shoulders. The non-stop debates about him and the pressure to produce transcended the local Vancouver market and became a major national storyline over the last week.

What that goal also represented, however, is the exact formula for why his game has steadily improved since Conor Garland moved up to his line.

In the past, Pettersson has usually handled the burden of driving play, holding the puck and creating offence. He’s been the one responsible for creatively taking defenders on one-on-one. He’s the one who has to transport the puck up ice and make plays off the rush. He’s the one who has to attract the attention of defenders and create space for his linemates. It’s as if the overwhelming majority of all puck-carrying, playmaking and play-driving has had to go through him.

Pettersson doesn’t need to do the heavy lifting and be a puck-dominant player anymore now that he’s playing with Garland, arguably the Canucks’ best five-on-five play-driving forward. Garland and Nils Höglander can create havoc in the offensive zone on their own with speed, tenacity, battle-winning and playmaking below the goal line. Pettersson just has to find a way to get open in the slot and trust that his wingers will get him the puck in dangerous scoring areas.

Just look at Pettersson’s goal against Pittsburgh. Garland has the puck behind the net; notice how every Penguins player is turned around and watching him. Because of that, no Penguins player can keep their eye on Pettersson sneaking into the slot.

From there, Garland made a perfect pass to tee Pettersson up.

🚨Canucks Goal🚨

Elias Pettersson scores his first goal of the season! #Canucks #LetsGoPens
🎥: Sportsnet | NHL pic.twitter.com/TE4b9F0DWK

— CanucksArmy (@CanucksArmy) October 27, 2024

This strategy of Garland holding the puck and drawing the opposition’s attention while Pettersson finds a way to get open in the slot has been working for a few games now. Pettersson’s first point of the season against the Philadelphia Flyers was scored this way:

This line’s first shift of the game against the Chicago Blackhawks was a great example of this, too. As Garland started skating the puck from low to high, Andreas Athanasiou, the center who was supposed to mark Pettersson, left the middle to close Garland’s space. Because of that, Pettersson was wide open in the slot. He received the puck from Garland and made a sweet one-touch pass to Höglander which would have been a goal if not for Petr Mrazek’s miraculous save.

Video courtesy Sportsnet

We’re not going to include every offensive clip like this, but there are many similar examples of how this line has manufactured offence.

In previous seasons, we wondered if Pettersson and Garland were incompatible as linemates because both of them are puck-dominant players who like to be the primary play-creator on a line. For them to mesh well together, one would have to be OK with not possessing the puck individually as often. But Pettersson is embracing that his role on the line is different now — he doesn’t always need to have possession, he’s often most dangerous moving off the puck and finding open space in the slot.

“They’re easy to play with, they work hard and they’re good in the corners,” Pettersson said of fitting in with Garland and Höglander when we asked him about the line’s chemistry in Chicago last week. “We talked about letting them do that work because they’re better in the corners and stronger with cutbacks than me. So I just find open ice, be the high F3 and concentrate on making the next play. They’re good on the forecheck, and we’ve played two good games now but I think we have even more.”

“He’s an exceptional player that anyone can find chemistry with,” noted Garland of playing with Pettersson. “Last year I loved my role and we were a really good team. This year if I’m with him, but we’re a really good team, then I’m happy with that too. I worked really hard this summer to get my game to a place where I could play with those guys, and I love playing with him.”

It’s a small sample, but Pettersson and Garland’s underlying numbers together this season are strong: They’ve outshot their opponents 33-25 and have controlled a 61.5 percent share of expected goals. Garland’s playmaking down low is opening up more space and puck touches for Pettersson in prime scoring areas around the slot. And if Pettersson can continue finishing chances as decisively as he did last night, the floodgates could start opening for this line offensively.

How Brännström can stay in the lineup

After Friday’s practice at UBC, Rick Tocchet was asked what Brännström needs to do to stay in the lineup once Derek Forbort rejoins the team. It’s no secret his puck-moving ability has been a revelation for the third pair — it’s something Tocchet has gushed about as well — but Vancouver’s head coach pointed to another area the coaching staff will be keeping an eye on.

“Footey (Adam Foote) showed a clip today where he had a bigger guy going to the net and he boxed the guy out. If he can do that, he’s going to stay in the lineup,” Tocchet said on Friday. “Just because he’s a smaller guy (it doesn’t mean he can’t do it), you can still get in front of people. I just think he’s improved every game.”

Brännström had another strong showing against the Penguins. He continued making smart, dynamic plays with the puck, but his defensive play was sharp, too. In the clip below, watch how he assertively pinned Michael Bunting against the defensive zone boards to help the Canucks steal possession back. He didn’t get an assist on the play, but it directly sparked the counterattack rush for Arshdeep Bains’ game-winning goal.

Video courtesy Sportsnet

Brännström wasn’t on the ice for a single high-danger chance against in 13:13 of five-on-five action against Pittsburgh. The Canucks outshot the Penguins 15-6, had an 8-0 edge in high-danger chances and outscored them 2-0 during his minutes. For the most part, Vancouver has had concerning offensive metrics this season whenever Quinn Hughes has been on the bench. Brännström’s play is one of the reasons why Vancouver generated so many offensive looks and scored four even-strength goals without needing a superhero performance from Hughes, who still played well but didn’t score a point and was only on the ice for one of the Canucks’ four goals.

Tocchet also seems open to shifting Brännström to the right side once Forbort returns. He mentioned on Friday he checked the analytics of Brännström’s performance on the right side in Ottawa and that the numbers were fine. Whether it’s on the left or right side, Brännström needs to stay in the lineup so long as he’s performing at this level. Vancouver clearly needs what he provides on the back end.

Sprong and how the incoming free-agent wingers have fit

Vancouver’s forward speed crushed Pittsburgh on Saturday, and some of its newest forward additions — most notably Kiefer Sherwood and Daniel Sprong — were essential to how the Canucks punished the Penguins repeatedly off of the rush.

Integrating new players at the NHL level isn’t easy. Unsurprisingly, it hasn’t been a bump-free transition for all of Vancouver’s newly added unrestricted free-agent wingers in the early going.

Sherwood has perhaps made the most seamless transition in Vancouver. He’s quickly seized a third-line role, found immediate chemistry with Teddy Blueger and played to a consistent identity in a way some of Vancouver’s bottom-six forwards struggled to night in and night out last season.

Of late, Danton Heinen has found success on Vancouver’s third line but has also been moved more frequently around the lineup and, after a lengthy top-six audition throughout training camp, the preseason and to open the regular season, seems to have settled into a more defined bottom-six role.

Of the four key wing signings the Canucks made in unrestricted free agency, Jake DeBrusk was the marquee name and the player they committed the most money and term to. His speed, north-south-attacking dynamism and underrated playmaking ability have been evident on occasion, but he seems to be finding his feet still through the first seven games. To this point, DeBrusk has had an anemic five-on-five shot rate and has yet to find the back of the net for his first Canucks goal.

Brought to Vancouver in part to play with Pettersson, the Canucks have already pushed that experiment aside. DeBrusk seems to be a good fit on J.T. Miller’s wing and that line has carried play, a good sign even if they’ve yet to do significant damage offensively. Meanwhile, DeBrusk has managed four points in his first seven games, although it’s worth noting two of those four points came on the power play and DeBrusk has since been dropped off of the first unit.

On Saturday, in a sequence that seemed to summarize his work-in-progress adjustment, DeBrusk led a wasteful two-on-one opportunity in the first period and the Penguins opened the scoring shortly thereafter as the play moved to the other end of the rink. It was the sort of play — a forced pass that didn’t connect as intended when a dangerous rush shot would’ve been the more straightforward attacking decision — that felt typical for a player still finding their footing and building confidence with a new team.

To DeBrusk’s credit, from that point onward, he simplified his game enormously. In particular, he seemed to go to the net with more discipline and look for second-stick opportunities in the latter half of Saturday’s game, arguably putting in his most dangerous Canucks performance overall. If he lives on the inside with that level of regularity going forward, the goals are just a matter of time.

And this check-in with the new free-agent wingers brings us to Sprong, who returned to Vancouver’s lineup on Saturday and made an immediate impact. Playing on the fourth line with Pius Suter and Bains, Sprong managed an assist on an intentional pass off Alex Nedeljkovic’s pads which set up Bains for his first NHL goal.

The shot for the rebound was clever, but it was the speed to burn Erik Karlsson out wide and create the initial opportunity that stood out. It was an elite play, one Tocchet noted prominently after the game as he described Sprong’s performance as “excellent.”

“I saw a lot of great things, and I liked his attitude this week,” Tocchet said. “I give him a lot of credit. We knew this would be a long-term (thing) where if he played a couple games we’d have to work with him as a staff, talk to him. He took the information and he practiced really well. To me, I thought he was a star tonight.”

There’s an interesting tidbit hidden in Tocchet’s response worth noting and dwelling on. It’s the idea of Sprong as something of a project, a player the club hopes to draw more out of in the weeks and months to come.

A player that, in other words, the Canucks are focused on getting the most out of when it matters down the stretch and into the playoffs, regardless of what the early growing pains may look like.

“We talked yesterday after practice, just for some clarity on what’s expected,” Sprong said after Saturday’s game. “We had a good conversation and I think it helped lead to tonight, but you have to be consistent in this league.

“It’s just six games into the year. I’d rather be having them now than after Game 82. None of us are going to be talking about the first six games of the season when we’re (at the end of the season). It’s a story right now, but in 60 or 70 games, we’re not going to talk about it, you know?”

The early returns from Vancouver’s free-agent forward additions have largely been impressive in the first few weeks of the campaign. It’s early, but it certainly looks like Canucks management was successful in adding a dimension of speed, offensive firepower and attacking depth to the forward lineup.

Ultimately though, we’re still very early into this experiment. It’s worked, and DeBrusk and Sprong — arguably Vancouver’s two highest-ceiling wing additions — have yet to fully ramp up and find their footing. That’s an exciting prospect for what this club could look like at the end of this campaign.

(Photo of Elias Pettersson being congratulated after scoring against the Penguins: Derek Cain / Getty Images)