This is the eighth time Elias Pettersson has done it.
Eight years of NHL training camp.
It doesn’t feel that long, the Vancouver Canucks’ No. 1 centre concedes. And yet here he is, age 26, still young, but in NHL terms very much now middle-aged.
What you might have been able to get away with when you were 20 just isn’t so easy anymore. Your skills surprise no one. There’s a book on you.
You have to be smarter in what you do. Your best scoring years are almost certainly behind you, though you can still be a highly productive player for a few years yet.
Last year was a disaster for Pettersson. He knows this. He doesn’t really want to talk about it. He would rather focus on how he believes he’s put in the work to be the player who was a near superstar all of two years ago. His 102-point season was 2022-23. That’s only two years ago.
And the years before that, they weren’t always easy, but there was a reasonably consistent thread in all this nonetheless. The game isn’t that complicated and he was really, really good at it. Like a dancer, he had all the foundational movements down pat. He had a natural instinct that served him really, really well.
Did he simply lose his way?
At the same time, did he just need to mature a little, to learn how to make those basics stronger and also how to adapt the basics to a league that had adapted to him?
“I just want to get back to being myself,” Pettersson says.
And when he says “being myself,” he explains, he means how he plays the game: skating hard. Shooting. Playing the same as the guy who put up all those points, who attacked lanes to the net with a powerful stride, who could rip shots into the back of the net.
At the same time as he pushes the reset button on his on-ice play, he’s finding a new role as a leader on the team. As everyone knows, the leadership dynamic last season was difficult. The relationship between him and fellow assistant captain J.T. Miller soured, badly. He doesn’t talk about that.
But he does acknowledge there’s a load off. His head coach, Adam Foote, has seen a noticeable change in his star centre’s demeanour. Whether it’s about him finally realizing that the sheen from his explosive, exciting start to his career is gone, or whether it’s just natural growth, Foote says he hasn’t been able to pinpoint it, but Pettersson has matured nonetheless.
“His teammates notice it,” Foote said. “Look at the great players that continue to be great: they keep getting better. Crosby, for example, he’s always working on his game, no matter if he’s in Year 15. And you know, Ryan O’Reilly is that type of guy. That’s why they can keep staying in the game and keep improving every year on some of the things they got to get better at.
“I just seen him in just a different mindset,” Foote, who played with a true all-star cast of superstars in his day, added. “The nice thing is that we can see it happening now. Just want to see him sustain it.”
Brock Boeser knows Pettersson as well as anyone in Vancouver. He was there for Pettersson’s spectacular rookie season.
He’s also had to deal with the realities of aging. He’s 28 now. Boeser was drafted a decade ago. He knows very well how when you hit your mid-20s, you have to really start putting in the work in the off-season.
When you come in, first you have to adjust to the pace of play. Then you have to learn how to manage yourself physically through a long year. Then you have to reckon with just simply not being 20, 21 years old anymore.
“Your body just takes longer to recover now,” Boeser lamented.
But that’s a lesson every player has to learn.
“You may not have your best, but you gotta figure out how you can contribute in a good way,” the veteran sniper went on.
That’s the challenge of the long season, one that you understand better as you hit your mid-20s, but sometimes it takes a little trial-and-error to figure out how to prepare yourself as you get older. And, it would seem, Pettersson has recognized this. His added muscle this season is partly about being able to compete better in the moment, but also to be better able to handle the rigours of the long season.
He can feel the strength in his puck battles in practices and in games, he said.
“And I’m feeling good in my stride,” he added.
He feels it in his shot too. He’s switched back to a stiffer stick, an 87 flex.
Because he’s strong. “Yep,” he nods. It’s also a little bit about his technique.
“I use a little more sweep in my wrister,” he explained.
The modern way to shoot is to keep your stick out in front of you and let the snap of the stick do almost all the work, powered by your wrists. It’s a quick shot, one that surprises. But if you put a little more sweep into it, as Pettersson does, you get your shoulders into the mix as well. The power is a little different.
And it’s a different launch angle too.
In the end, the solution to Pettersson’s woes may prove to be simply a return to the basics. To remembering what he does best — and then simply making those basics more powerful.
The blueprint is there. He is at least saying the right things and seems to have done the work.
Now it’s time to see, once he hits the dance floor, if he remembers all the steps.