Newly signed D-man Marcus Pettersson offers Canucks stability on and off ice
It took just two games for the Vancouver Canucks and Marcus Pettersson to agree to a six-year contract extension. His play on the ice and leadership off it made it an easy fit, writes Sportsnet’s Iain MacIntyre.
VANCOUVER — The Vancouver Canucks are not only upgrading their defence as they realign their team — they’re also trying to recalibrate their leadership.
Nobody wants another winter of discontent like this one was for the NHL team, which is partly why general manager Patrik Allvin was so aggressive in re-signing Marcus Pettersson to a six-year, $33-million contract just five days after his acquisition.
The Canucks are paying the 28-year-old top-four defenceman to stabilize and improve their defence as well as their dressing room after Friday’s trade of core leader J.T. Miller represented a seismic change for the organization.
The team announced the new contract on Wednesday afternoon after just two games with Pettersson, who was acquired from the Pittsburgh Penguins with the first-round pick the Canucks received from the New York Rangers in the Miller deal.
“Rick Tocchet and Adam Foote didn’t have the relationship with Marcus,” Allvin said Thursday of the head coach and his blue-line assistant. “So I wanted them to get a feel for what I’ve been talking about, more so Marcus’ leadership qualities and how professional he is. And I think those are the things that stood out right away for the coaches — how he interacted, how he communicated on the bench during the games with the players.
“That’s what we’ve been looking for here with a lot of younger players coming in (to the NHL team) within the next couple of years. We need to build a stronger leadership group and, obviously, Marcus is very consistent. He understands what his role and what his strengths are, and he plays a very, very consistent game. And I think that’s something for a lot of players just to watch how he carries himself every day and what he does to be successful. We stabilize our back end with a guy like that.”
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In his home games this week against the Detroit Red Wings and Colorado Avalanche, Pettersson partnered Tyler Myers in a shutdown pairing. With top defenceman Quinn Hughes injured, Pettersson averaged 24:30 per contest, much of it against Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond of the Wings, and Nathan MacKinnon and Martin Necas of the Avalanche, and the score was 1-1 at five-on-five with Pettersson on the ice.
From their time in Pittsburgh management, Allvin and Canucks president Jim Rutherford knew they were getting a legitimate top-four defenceman in Pettersson. The Swede’s six-foot-five frame, reach, defensive awareness, mobility, passing, age and experience checked a lot of boxes for Vancouver.
But it was also Pettersson’s character and professionalism they coveted. His steady leadership.
It was a factor for Pettersson, too, whose $5.5-million average cap hit skews towards team-friendly as the NHL is about to enter a three-year period of historic salary inflation.
“Yeah, a lot, honestly,” he said in a Zoom call from San Jose, where the Canucks visit the Sharks Thursday night. “I’ve always tried to be myself. I try to be as vocal as I can and help everybody. I know some of the guys said a lot of good things about me in Pittsburgh and I’m really grateful for that. It’s not something that I try to go out of my way being (a leader), but for sure, that’s something that’s maybe a little bit in my nature.”
After starting his career with the Anaheim Ducks, Pettersson was acquired by Rutherford for the Penguins in 2018 and spent more than six years learning from Sidney Crosby and others in Pittsburgh.
“First off, what a great player he is,” Pettersson said. “You know, he leads by example on the ice. I think the competitiveness, the will to be better every day, is sort of something that I take from him. And then obviously off the ice, he’s a really good team player in the sense that he brings everybody together.
“Just the competitive drive that he has, the love for the game, he comes in every day and wants to be miles better than what he is. I’m like, ‘It’s not possible, you can’t get better.’ So just to see the drive that he has really taught me a lot over the last seven years here.”
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When Hughes returns from the lower-body injury the Canucks regard as day-to-day, Pettersson will plug in as the team’s second-pairing left-side defenceman for the foreseeable future.
There’s been a lot of discussion in the Vancouver market comparing Pettersson to Nikita Zadorov, the bruising defenceman the Canucks acquired mid-season last year but lost in unrestricted free agency in July. Preferring to play in the U.S., Zadorov, 29, signed a six-year, $30-million contract with the Boston Bruins, later saying it was the same as what Vancouver offered.
The two defencemen are not the same. It would be great to be able to afford both. Zadorov is the ultimate specialty piece, an X-factor who especially helped the Canucks at playoff time.
But he was also a healthy scratch under Tocchet late in the regular season, and spent most of his playing time on the third pairing. Pettersson is not nearly as physical nor intimidating as Zadorov, but he is a reliable shutdown defenceman who averaged more than 22 minutes a game for the Penguins the last three years.
With his new contract, Pettersson becomes part of the Canucks core and a member of their leadership group.
“I saw a few of the games in the playoffs last year,” Pettersson said, “and how much … the city rallies around the team, and just great people everywhere, it seems. The Canadian market is going to be a little bit new from what I’m used to. But, I mean, I’m really excited.
“It’s a lot of great people — young, hungry guys that want to win, want to win every day. So there’s a lot of guys that have made an impression on me.”
He’s already making an impression on them, too.
