VANCOUVER — The result of the rift between former Canucks centre J.T. Miller and current Vancouver star Elias Pettersson was the main talking point when team president Jim Rutherford and general manager Patrik Allvin addressed the media on Monday.
It's been almost three months since the issue between the two players led to the Canucks trading Miller to the New York Rangers. Vancouver went on to finish six points out of the final playoff spot in the Western Conference.
“We went from a contending team to a team in transition, and we’ve continued to transition the team since the J.T. Miller trade,” Rutherford said. “We feel that our goaltending is in a good place, our defence is in a good place, and now there’s work to be done on the forwards to get back to where we would like to be and should be.”
After finishing first in the Pacific Division, reaching the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs and collecting numerous league awards in 2023-24, the Canucks fell by 19 points in the standings and will now spend the summer looking to shore up their depth down the middle.
“Getting that centre ice strengthened, then you can do a lot of different things with your wingers,” said Rutherford. “That that will be Patrik's priority. And if we can do that, it's going to make it easier to make our forwards better.”
The Canucks finished the year ranked 31st with 25.5 shots per game, down from 28.4 shots one year earlier. Scoring also dropped, from 3.40 goals per game down to 2.84.
The key piece of Vancouver’s puzzle is Pettersson, the enigmatic 26-year-old pivot who was hampered by a knee issue that impeded his off-season training. Add in the Miller rift, and Pettersson was a shadow of his usual self, with his usual speed and deception muted as he finished the year with a disappointing 45 points in 64 games.
“This is not something that he’s going to be able to snap his fingers and change,” Rutherford said, citing Steve Yzerman and Sidney Crosby as examples of talented centres who changed their games as they matured, and found the road to championships.
“He’s going to have to buy in to being a complete player. He’s going to have to buy in to working hard.”
That process is underway, Rutherford added. Pettersson has remained in Vancouver and is training daily at Rogers Arena.
And while Pettersson signed the largest contract in Canucks franchise history when he inked his US$92.8-million extension on March 2, 2024, he doesn’t have trade protection until his no-movement clause takes effect on July 1.
On Monday, Allvin declined to take a potential Pettersson deal off the table.
“Sitting here today, I definitely want to keep all my options open,” Allvin said. “Saying that, regarding Petey, we still believe in him.”
With the salary cap due to jump from $88 million to $95.5 million next season, Rutherford believes a major upgrade down the middle would most likely need to happen by trade, rather than through free agency.
“Tough decisions,” he said. “It'll be expensive, but it'll be also very expensive not to get one. We're going to be open to do whatever it takes.”
Rutherford also didn’t rule out the possibility of re-signing key unrestricted free agents Brock Boeser and Pius Suter.
“We could lose those players; we might not,” he said. “It’s one of the reasons that we didn't trade them at the deadline, so we had a longer runway to make that decision.”
For now, personnel matters are back-burnered until the status of head coach Rick Tocchet is settled — and that should come soon.
“I believe that Tocc and his coaching staff did as good a job coaching the team this year as they did the year before, when he was coach of the year,” Rutherford said. “He was dealt a totally different hand this year.”
The team holds an option for Tocchet’s services for one more year, but won’t hold him to that if he doesn’t plan to stay long term.
“We've gone through a process wherein we negotiated. I would suspect sometime this week, he'll have a decision,” Rutherford said. “We have gone a long way from where coaches have been compensated with the Canucks, and we’re hoping that he takes that contract and stays.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 21, 2025.
Carol Schram, The Canadian Press
