The Vancouver Canucks and Elias Pettersson Need to Have a Real Conversation

There’s got to be a real conversation between the Vancouver Canucks and Elias Pettersson about where this is going and what the options are

Donnie & Dhali: Elliotte Friedman, on the agent poll that the Vancouver Canucks are the worst-run franchise. That’s what happens when you finish last. They had to pivot mid-season with the Quinn Hughes situation. Now, where to go?  They’ll need to sit down with Elias Pettersson and see where they are as they head into a rebuild.

** NHLRumors.com transcription

“Look, the bottom line is they’re losing. And when you’re losing, this is what happens. This is this is where you get voted on.

And it’s been, and the other thing too is they had to pivot during the year. You know, when people say that the Canucks don’t have a direction, I think it’s because they tried something and it didn’t work, it blew up and it didn’t work, and they had to trade Quinn Hughes, and all of a sudden, you’re kind of drowning a bit, right?

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And now they know that they’ve got a rebuild. They’ve got to start all over again. And, you know, I think when you have years like this, that’s what happens. That’s what people think about you. And you have to expect when you finish 32nd in the NHL, people are going to say you’re a poorly run franchise, and you’re going and you’re not where people want to be right now.

Your only option in situations like that is to say, all right, how are we going to climb off the mat? How are we going to get better? I mean, the one thing I really liked last night was Douglas scores his first NHL goal, and you can tell those guys were legitimately happy for him. If they hadn’t celebrated that, I would have been really worried. I would have been like, you have nothing if your teammates aren’t celebrating that.

So you’re looking at your young guys. You’re trying to build around them. You’re trying to build around (Marco) Rossi. You’re trying to roll around (Zeev) Buium. You’re trying to build around (Tom) Willander. You’re trying to build around this particular group.

I think the biggest offseason question there is going to be, I would suspect there’s going to be a sit down with (Elias) Pettersson after the year, and there’s got to be a real conversation about where this is going and what the options are. Like they, I think they have to have a lengthy meeting, put it all on the table and just say, you know, you can’t continue to have this conversation around your team for another year.

You’ve basically cleaned everything out that you had to clean out. It’s sort of like the last thing you know, are you committed? Are we here? What can we do to get you back to being the player you were a couple years ago? Or does everybody really believe that the right time is to talk to other places you’re willing to go? And you know, to be honest, if I was the Canucks, I would facilitate that. Are there places want to go? Well, let’s give you permission to go and meet and talk to people on that team, if they’re interested.

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I think that is, to me, that’s probably the biggest offseason thing now is an honest conversation with Pettersson as representative and the Canucks. What are our options here? And if we don’t think they’re here, where do we go? Because you’re kind of moving on from everything that was hanging over you.

I think the last question Rick is, do we think this can still work in Vancouver? And if we all do really believe it, how do we make how do we get there? How do we fix it so that Pettersson can be the Pettersson we saw a couple years ago.

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