Canucks: Elias Pettersson's blocked shots are microcosm of the season

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Blocking shots is like killing rats; it’s good but you’d rather not do it at all

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Published Mar 31, 2026 • Last updated 3 minutes ago • 3 minute read

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Elias Pettersson attempts to block a shot against the Leafs. Photo by Claus Andersen /Getty ImagesArticle content

If you want to understand how badly this season has gone for the Vancouver Canucks, look no further than the record Elias Pettersson may set by the time his team has played out its remaining nine games.

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On Monday in Las Vegas, Pettersson, the Canucks’ notional No. 1 centre, blocked his 100th shot of the season.

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The NHL record for most blocks in a season by a forward is 113, set by Alex Tuch last season with Buffalo.

To re-count the old line from now-occasional hockey writer Kent Wilson: “Blocking shots is like killing rats. Doing it is preferable to not, but if you’re doing it all the time it suggests you have bigger problems.”

That is, stopping the puck from getting to the net is good, but really you’d rather just have the puck on your stick.

And in Pettersson’s case, this is especially true. So much of why this season has gone badly for the Canucks is because Pettersson, and the team’s other more talented puck movers and shooters, have not had the puck on their stick often enough.

This is both because of individual poor play, but also more broadly, because of how the team has been setup to fail.

For a start, what is plain as day is the way the team has been asked to play has not worked. Whereas former head coach Rick Tocchet asked his team to sit in the middle and defend the guts of the ice, as he liked to call it, present coach Adam Foote has asked his defenders to get right at the opposition, to stop them in their tracks before they can try attacking the net.

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Tocchet wanted a shell, but also the ability to shift quickly to a breakout. Foote simply wanted to bury the opposition away from the net, to take away opportunity before it even developed.

The Canucks under Tocchet were not world beaters — they were simply middle of the pack defensively. Under Foote, though, they are the league’s worst defensive team. Anyone watching them can see this.

The numbers back this up. While their shot-attempts against has gone up compared to last year, the shot quality is the real story. According to Natural Stat Trick’s expected-goals model, nearly every single Canucks regular last year would have a better expected-goals against rate than every Canucks player this season. (Expected-goals is the measure of how likely every shot taken in a game is to end up as a goal, based on the data of shots taken from that spot taken since 2007.)

That’s a staggering collapse defensively.

But on top of this, there has been some very poor play from individuals. The Canucks have struggled to attack when they have had the puck.

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No one has been more disappointing in this regard than Pettersson. He has shown flashes of his old self, which almost makes this all worse. Before his stunning offensive collapse in the second half of the 2023-24 season, he was a player who pushed the tempo with his skating, even if it wasn’t graceful. He was a player who consistently fired the puck from good shooting spots, keeping goalies and defenders honest.

He no longer plays like that. Too often, he is caught up in traffic with no plan. Rarely does he find ways to unleash his shot, and when he does, it struggles for power.

That he is still a hard-working, diligent defensive player is good, but that’s not what the money is for. He is paid very well to post points.

And whether that’s because he is broken as an individual player or whether he is stuck in a system that does him no favours, the fact that he’s done so well blocking shots while struggling to lead offensively is, in the end, actually a generous descriptor of the season.

The Canucks haven’t defended well, and they haven’t scored well. That’s why they are last in the league, looking down a path that screams rebuild.

Next year, let’s just hope they have the puck on their stick more.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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Canucks: Elias Pettersson’s blocked shots are microcosm of the season

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