Canucks star Elias Pettersson says he battled knee injury down stretch

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One of the lasting images of the Vancouver Canucks’ season will be Elias Pettersson checking out the crowd coming off the ice after Game 7 against the Edmonton Oilers, making sure he was soaking it all in at Rogers Arena.

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One of the lasting quotes from the Canucks’ year-end media availability Thursday at the downtown rink belonged to Pettersson as well, although it wasn’t quite so quaint.

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“It will be nice to get a break from everything,” he said when asked about going into the off-season. “Obviously, it’s been a very noisy season in terms of contracts and how sh-t I’ve been the last three months. I’m just excited to get a little break here, and then get back on the horse again, train hard, and come in the best shape possible next season.”

Pettersson, 25, is in the conversation for Vancouver’s most important player. He has elite skill, but he’s shown he can be a top-notch defender, evidenced by receiving votes for the Frank Selke Trophy in the past. Pettersson could easily be for the Canucks what Pavel Datsyuk was for the Detroit Red Wings’ powerhouse teams of the early 2000s.

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Pettersson came into this season as a pending restricted free agent, having totalled 39 goals and 102 points in the 2022-23 campaign. There was rampant speculation about what he might do contract wise, and how long it might take for him to decide. He wound up signing an eight-year extension in March that will have him starting next year as an $11.6-million cap hit, and that’s currently the fifth-highest total in the league, behind only the ballyhooed quartet of Auston Matthews, Nathan MacKinnon, Connor McDavid and Artemi Panarin.

Pettersson had one goal and six points in 13 playoff games. He had amassed 34 goals and 89 points in the regular season. He took heat in both media and from fans on social media. He talked Thursday about battling through a knee injury he suffered in January. It doesn’t sound like it will require any sort of surgery, with Pettersson saying that it “just needs time … time to heal, time to rest, and get back home.” 

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Pettersson was a regular at Canuck practices down that stretch and in the playoffs. He played all 82 regular season games. Vancouver coach Rick Tocchet gave Brock Boeser, J.T. Miller, Filip Hronek and Ian Cole all the night off for the last league game in Winnipeg on April 18 that wouldn’t effect the standings.

That’s all fact. Also fact is that Pettersson had 35 goals this season in his combined 102 games, but that included just two goals in his final 26 games.

“The longer it went, the more pain I felt,” Pettersson said Thursday.

Tocchet, who joined general manager Patrik Allvin in meeting with the media Thursday after all the players spoke, said that Pettersson was dealing with “tendinitis,” and explained that team brass and medical staff “felt it was fine to keep going. … We didn’t feel we had to shut him down.”

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Allvin didn’t focus on an injury when he spoke about Pettersson’s season.

“I don’t know what he said when he was sitting up here, but I’m sure he wasn’t pleased with his performance after the All-Star Break, and I think he learned a lot,” Allvin relayed. “I think he’s hungry. He expressed it right away: He knows what he needs to improve on here in the summer. He wants to come back and be a really impactful player.

“His talent level is unique. That doesn’t go away. I think this was his first playoff experience playing every second day with travelling. When you’re a player like him and Quinn Hughes, they’re all going to play harder against you. What do you learn and how do you prepare yourself leading up for the second half?

“I think, to be honest, some of the additions we did last summer were to bring in guys with that experience who could help us teaching the young guys.”

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For what it’s worth, the Detroit News had a story in April 2015 with the headline, “Datsyuk proof playoff hockey is acquired skill.”

It centred around how Datsyuk had just three goals through his first 42 playoff games. In the 2008 post-season, he had 10 goals and 23 points in 22 games and was key in Detroit capturing the Stanley Cup. It was part of a five-year run where Datsyuk played 80 playoff games with the Red Wings and totalled 29 goals and 76 points.

That’s a blueprint for Pettersson. He talked Thursday about how these series against the Nashville Predators and then the Oilers have made him “hungrier to get back in the playoffs.

“We have something good building here,” Pettersson said. “On a personal level, I feel I can be better. There’s stuff I can take into my summer training and talk to to my trainers about so that I can become an even better player.

“Obviously, I’d love to keep playing (this season), but I’m excited for the future.”

sewen@postmedia.com

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