On Wednesday evening, the Vancouver Canucks announced that the team had assigned defenceman Elias Pettersson to Abbotsford of the AHL. With this move, Pettersson will get his first taste of North American hockey during Abbotsfords final stretch of games before and hopefully during the playoffs.
Pettersson’s Career in Europe
Pettersson spent most of the last three seasons of his development in the Swedish Hockey League, Sweden’s top league in the country. The defender played the majority of his time for Orbero. Still, during this season, he played most of his year with Vasteras of the Allsvenskin league, Sweden’s second-highest pro league, where he scored three goals and 11 assists for 14 points. Pettersson also represented Sweden at the 2023 and 2024 World Juniors, winning a Silver Medal in the 2024 tournament. Vancouver selected Pettersson in the third round, 80th overall, back in 2022 at the Montreal draft and signed him to an entry-level contract on Apr. 19, 2023.
Although they share both a first and last name, there is no relation between defenceman Elias Petterson and newly extended center Elias Pettersson. Pettersson joins a defense core in Abbotsford that includes Jett Woo, Matt Irwin, Akito Hirose, Filip Johansson, Cole McWard, Nick Cicek, and Guillaume Brisebois. Abbotsford currently sits sixth in the Pacific division in the AHL with a record of 30-22-4-2 for a total of 66 points, tied for fifth along with the Bakersfield Condors.
His Move to North America Is a Smart Move
This move by Patrik Alvin and the Canucks staff is a brilliant one because now Pettersson will have the opportunity to get acquainted with North American ice and the North American game. It is no shock that the North American style of hockey differs from the European style due to the larger rinks in Europe. The biggest part of the American game that Petterson will need to adapt to is increased physical contact due to the smaller ice. Players can be more physical with a smaller ice surface in North America. There is less of a chance that a player can lose body position on the ice, whereas, in Europe, there is a greater chance to lose body position on the ice because the surface is larger.
Elias will be bringing size and physicality to the back end. He is an extremely steady defenceman who enjoys the physical aspect of the game but can also join up in the rush when needed. Pettersson brought that aspect of his game to the Canucks most recent development camp in July and impressed Vancouver’s player development coach and fellow Swedish National team player Mikael Samuelsson. “Even though he is at a young age, he’s very physical and knocks people off their feet and onto the ice, said Samuelsson. “He knows what kind of player he is and plays within his limits.”
The former third-round pick is the definition of a stay-at-home defenceman, a rare breed in the modern-day NHL, and could help Vancouver in the future. Players like Pettersson are not held to as high of a commodity because they do not put up the points that an offensive defenceman would put up, but once the playoffs come along, players like that become crucial. For example, a player like Luke Schenn may not appear on the scoresheet, but he was critical for Tampa Bay during their Stanley Cup runs in 2020 and 2021.
Pettersson will now get this opportunity to become more familiar with North American ice when he straps up his skates for his first AHL in the coming days; Pettersson was recently photographed at the Abbotsford Canucks most recent practice on Friday. This will hopefully be the start of a new wave of Canucks prospects coming over to North America from Europe. Many Canucks fans are waiting to see when Johnathan Lekkerimaki will come over to North America, and hopefully, he will come over sooner rather than later.
