The Vancouver Canucks are in an awkward position, and not only because their former captain just gave them the ol’ Mariah Carey “I don’t know her.”

Everyone knows the Canucks are committed to a rebuild of some form. But what form that rebuild will take is highly dependent on things that haven’t happened yet, primarily the 2026 NHL Entry Draft, in which the Canucks will acquire their presumed future centrepiece.

As of now, however, said centrepiece could be a winger, a right-shot defender, or even a centre, if the Canucks go really off the board.

All that uncertainty makes it hard to predict what moves the team will make next and what shape their roster will take as they head into the 2026-27 season – and beyond.

If there’s one area of the roster where the Canucks seem to have a pretty concrete plan in place, however, it’s on the left side of their blueline.

Pending the draft, the Canucks’ top all-around asset is Zeev Buium, a 20-year-old LD who won’t even turn 21 until December, and who is said to have definitive top-pairing potential. The team is also quite fond of the 22-year-old Elias Pettersson, another LD who seems to have some top-four potential but is otherwise suited to becoming an excellent, physical, and impactful long-term bottom-pairing fixture.

Behind them in the prospect pipeline, the Canucks have a couple of solid if unspectacular upcomers in Kirill Kudryavtsev, 22 and already in his second season as Abbotsford’s best defender, and Sawyer Mynio, who just had a great rookie pro campaign as a 20-year-old.

And in order to prevent the left side of the blueline from becoming a total greenline, the Canucks have the 29-year-old Marcus Pettersson in place, and under contract until 2031, as the designated veteran ballast.

But for ballast, Pettersson hasn’t exactly provided a lot of balance and stability in this 2025-26 season. It’s been easily the worst year of his NHL career to date, and the fall-off from last season’s performance has been noticeable to the point of being almost shocking. Now, some sort of fall-off has occurred this year for just about every veteran Canuck. But Pettersson’s decline has been so sudden and so sharp that, when combined with his age, one wonders if his best years are now decidedly behind him.

One also wonders if that means Pettersson is truly the support veteran this blueline needs on its left side.

More specifically, Pettersson’s mentorship has primarily taken the form of directly partnering with rookie Willander in 2025-26. To date, Pettersson has been Willander’s partner for almost 60% of Willander’s even-strength shifts in the NHL.

The most important question to answer, then, is whether Pettersson is really the long-term partner Willander needs for support and development – or whether the Canucks should start looking into other options.

This is a difficult thing to determine on statistics alone, because the entire Vancouver defensive structure is a rat’s nest of bad numbers throughout 2025-26. It’s easy enough to say that Pettersson and Willander have played poorly together as a pairing, and the stats will back that up. They’ve been outscored 21-29 at even strength, they have a collective 43.79% Corsi, and only a 42.53% control of scoring chances.

But then, is that a reflection of the pairing or the entire Vancouver defensive system?

Away from Pettersson, Willander’s numbers don’t improve much at all. He’s been outscored 12-19 away from Pettersson, with a 43% Corsi, and a 41.64% control of scoring chances. And those are mostly minutes paired with Buium and the younger Pettersson, in which Willander is presumably facing off against lesser competition.

But Willander will, almost certainly, get better as he goes. Pettersson’s career seems to be headed in the other direction, and so it has to be said that Pettersson’s numbers aren’t any better away from Willander, either. Minus Willander, Pettersson has been outscored 24-35, has a 44.56% Corsi, and a 45.22% control of scoring chances. And that’s with Filip Hronek and Tyler Myers as partners, for the most part.

So it’s hard to say that this is a case of Pettersson being dragged down by having to carry extra weight for a rookie partner. It’s more a case of Pettersson having a bad year, regardless of any dramatic game-winners, and that not changing when he’s paired up with Willander.

Given the importance of Willander’s development going as well as possible from here on out, this brings us back to the question of whether a more directly supportive partner is worth seeking out or whether the Canucks should stick to their commitment to Pettersson in that role.

To get a clearer answer on that, we’ve got to dip into the intangible a bit. Because, on the surface, Pettersson once appeared like a near-ideal mentor for Willander. They’re countrymen, sure, but Pettersson has also played the exact sort of mobile, rangy, and consistently physical, defensively-oriented defence that the Canucks have been hoping Willander will one day deliver.

Only, Pettersson has not been delivering that this year. Pettersson has been noticeably less physical, though that’s been a case of quality, not quantity. Technically, Pettersson has more hits-per-60 this year (2.75) than last year (2.10), but none of them have really rattled the bone.

Pettersson’s shot-blocks are way down from 5.58 per 60 to 4.80 per 60. His penalty killing contributions have fallen off a cliff.

To see a veteran like Pettersson get so far away from the habits and playstyle that made him successful in the past bodes very poorly for him setting a positive example for Willander in the long term. We’re not suggesting that this is an issue of attitude or effort, as it could very easily be interpreted as Pettersson showing his age at a position where age can quickly become a complicating factor. Either way, however, it’s not exactly a case-study one wants Willander to be watching too closely.

And maybe there is a personal element at play here to some extent, because Pettersson just doesn’t have the same bite to him that he once did. We hate to boil all this down to a single moment in a mostly meaningless game, but there was something in the Minnesota matchup that really crystallized this for us.

Long-time thorn Ryan Hartman crashed the Vancouver net hard enough so that his thigh made decent contact with Nikita Tolopilo’s head. Willander was on the scene, and as he should, he made an attempt to shove Hartman out of there, but had trouble with it. Practiced troublemaker that he is, Hartman gave Willander a stiff-arm to the head and then just stood there, hovering over Tolopilo and holding off Willander by the face. Willander gave it the ol’ college try, but it was a bit of an embarrassing sequence for him all the same.

Pettersson, meanwhile, arrived on the scene seconds later and just…watched. With Hartman literally on his goalie and grabbing his rookie partner by the jowls, Pettersson chose not to engage at all. He just stood idly by, waited for the whistle, and took the next faceoff as if nothing had happened. There’s an element of “just going through the motions” to Pettersson’s game right now, and that’s not something anyone needs Willander to catch a whiff of.

Simply put, it would be nice for a veteran support partner to, well, support Willander a lot more than that. And that leads us back to the original point, which is that if Pettersson isn’t quite suited for this role, there are plenty of other vets out there that might be. Should this lead the Canucks to attempt to trade Pettersson this offseason, and attempt to find another veteran LD to fill in as Willander’s partner?

From what we’ve seen this year, they should at least try. Hoping that Pettersson bounces back next year and re-finds his game is an okay fallback option, but it should not be their choice path forward. Not when something as crucial as Willander’s long-term future may be somewhat on the line.