With Tyler Myers still serving his suspension for cross-checking Evan Bouchard, there was room for the Vancouver Canucks to reward one of the top defencemen down in Abbotsford with his National Hockey League debut. That player was highly anticipated defensive prospect, Elias Pettersson, A.K.A. D-Petey.
This was a relatively quick turnaround for the Swedish defenceman, as Vancouver only drafted him in the 2022 NHL draft. He would spend the following two seasons splitting time between Orebro in the SHL, Orebro’s Junior Team and Vasteras IK – his hometown team – before heading overseas to join the American Hockey League last season.
Pettersson played in eight games at the tail end of Abbotsford’s season last year, registering two assists and a plus-four rating. However, points aren’t the main factor in his game.
The 6’3″ defenceman relies on playing a strong, physical, bully style of hockey to make himself difficult to play against. Around the same time as his AHL debut, another Swedish prospect, Jonathan Lekkerimäki, was playing in his first few games and started to get some attention from the other teams.
But Elias Pettersson wasn’t going to let that fly.
I spoke with Pettersson after his first few games regarding him making his presence felt after a Colorado Eagles player hit Lekkerimäki nearly into the bench.
“I’m going to stick up every time for my teammates,” Pettersson said when asked about the hit on Lekkerimäki. “If that happens again, I’m going to be there again.”
Something very encouraging to hear from a young defenceman.
The Vasteras, Sweden native followed those eight games up with a strong season thus far in Abbotsford. He continues to bring a sound defensive game:
He puts his body on the line to limit the opposition:
While not shying away from throwing some crushing hits on his opponents:
Adding some points to his stat line as well:
Through the 2024-2025 season in Abbotsford, Pettersson has one goal and 12 assists for 13 points while sitting fourth on the team in penalty minutes (36) and second among Abbotsford defenceman in plus-minus rating (plus-8) in 36 games. His efforts this season earned him AHL All-Star honours, as he was selected to be the Abbotsford Canucks representative in California this February.
The Vancouver Canucks rewarded Pettersson for his strong play by receiving a call-up to the big leagues and suited up in his NHL debut against the league-leading Washington Capitals on Saturday night.
The Swede walked away with a 2-1 victory in his NHL debut. Now, let’s break down all 14 of his shifts from last night’s game and analyze Elias Pettersson’s game in our series called, The Tape.

The Tape

His first shift was on the fly, and he showed his strong gap control by cutting the angle off Capitals forward Taylor Raddysh to get to the puck first and chop the puck out of danger. The play would result in an icing by the Canucks.
On the ensuing faceoff, Pettersson stayed with his man and completely eliminated him from the play. He fed him a few cross-checks and kept him to the outside to start. Once the player rotates toward the front of the net, Pettersson continues to not give the opposition any comfortable ice and defend the front of the net.
Once the puck carrier from behind the net enters a threatening position, Pettersson leaves his man at the net front. However, he uses his stick and cuts off the passing lane.
Very strong instincts displayed from the defenceman on his first shift. But the impressive plays on this shift don’t stop there.
Is that…*cleans glasses* a defenceman other than #43 or #17 that makes a long breakout pass from his own end? Unreal. In fact, it’s such a good pass that Linus Karlsson couldn’t retain possession of the puck.
Pettersson would get rewarded for this strong shift by registering his first plus rating, as he was paired with Quinn Hughes for his backhand snipe in the first period. Pettersson wouldn’t touch the puck on the play but had strong positioning by taking the middle of the ice when his defensive partner was pinching, so he could defend either side if the play went array.
We all knew this would be featured in this piece.
Pettersson gets a great jump off the faceoff to pick up the loose puck, and with that speed he’s gained and all the empty space in front of him, he takes it and runs. It’s pretty intimidating to see Alex Ovechkin skate full speed toward anybody, let alone a rookie. But Pettersson does a great job of putting two hands on his stick, turning his back to Ovechkin and shielding the puck, which completely eliminates the threat of him getting a stick on it and disrupting his rush.
The 6’3″ defenceman continues to use his body as leverage as he takes the puck wide right while leaning backward on Capitals defenceman Martin Ferhavery. Pettersson ends up losing the handle on the puck, but with his strong board play, he holds the defender off for Sasson to pick up the puck in the corner.
Another thing to like is Pettersson doesn’t just rush back to the point as a defender. He skates back to the faceoff dot and turns his stance, keeping himself in the play as an offensive threat if the pass comes his way but also making sure to flee back to his nest at the point.
For a physical defenceman, that was a heckuva rush from his own end, and that offensive awareness could lead to him creating a scoring chance before returning back to his perch.
This was a little bit of a rushed play from Pettersson. The puck deflects to Pettersson in the neutral zone, and instead of calmly taking the puck and skating with it, he sends a weak backhand pass to Connor McMichael to easily intercept and head into the offensive zone with speed.
Pettersson does a good job of cutting off McMichael’s angle and uses his long stick to keep the play along the outside, but had he not been such a strong skater, it could have resulted in a chance all alone the other way.
Now, we can see what he was trying to do. Had the pass gone through, Miller would have received it with minimal pressure to regain the zone. However, with his edge work, Pettersson could have corralled the puck, skated to his right, and sent a tape-to-tape pass to Miller instead. But again, that decision-making will come with more experience.
Pettersson is the first one back in a routine dump-in pickup. However, the Swedish defenceman can’t control the bouncing puck and overskates it, which results in Aliaksei Protas finding Tom Wilson in the slot for a dangerous scoring chance. Pettersson does a great job of keeping his eye on the puck carrier, gets down in the shooting lane, and blocks the shot. This leads to a Conor Garland clearance, allowing his pairing to change.
He put his defensive awareness on display to stick with the play and put his body on the line to block a shot.
With possession in the defensive zone, the Capitals send an outlet pass to a winger on Pettersson’s side, and you know he’s going in to pressure that player. Pettersson makes his presence felt, pushing the Capitals forward enough to knock him off the puck, allowing Sasson to come in and regain possession in the zone. However, Sasson can’t get full possession of the puck, resulting in the Capitals controlling the puck.
If he keeps plays like that up, he’s going to instill fear into the opposition and create more offensive zone time for his team.
A little bit of the same on the next play, but Pettersson gets there a little late, and Lars Eller is able to feed it past Pettersson. But he does a great job of recovering as Vincent Desharnais pressures the puck carrier, and Pettersson goes to the middle of the ice to prevent a cross-ice pass.
Then, behind the net, when Taylor Raddysh can’t fully receive the ring around the boards, Pettersson again uses his body to gain inside leverage between Raddysh and the puck. This completely ties Raddysh up and allows so much time and space for Desharnais to lap around the back of the net and make a clean outlet pass to clear the zone.
He’s got the frame of an NHL defenceman at just 20 years old, and it’s nice to see him using it to his advantage in the defensive zone.
Unfortunately for Pettersson, he would see just four shifts in the third period, all before the nine-minute mark. However, his previous two shifts were uneventful, outside of good positioning and a nice zone exit pass.

Areas of Concern

Now, this wasn’t terribly bad. It was just his second shift, and it was nice to see his speed coming back and using that to gain momentum around the net. However, he could have made a better decision about what to do with this puck.
What ends up happening is Pettersson shoots it towards the boards. Which, isn’t a terrible idea, but there’s clearly a Capitals winger there ready to intercept the clearing attempt. Instead of shooting it toward the bottom of the boards, if he rings it around the glass a bit higher, maybe it gets by the forechecker. Or even a quick shoulder check and a back pass to Vincent Desharnais would have eliminated the Capitals being able to regain possession in the offensive zone.
To be fair, Nils Höglander somewhat directs traffic by pointing his stick to the outside boards, telling Pettersson to ring the puck around the boards. So, maybe part of the blame can go on Höglander here. But the quick awareness will come with time, and it’s not something to be overly concerned about.
There were points where Pettersson just kind of looked a little lost out there. After the intercepted backhand pass in the neutral zone, the Capitals continued to build pressure off Pettersson’s turnover.
A point shot from Jakob Chychrun rings off the post, and Pettersson is lost. Searching around for the puck, it hits his stick right in front of the net. Thankfully for him, the puck redirected out of danger. However, he still looked frazzled. The play continued on, mostly at the point and nobody for Pettersson to check. It just seemed like he didn’t know where to go or what to do, so he just decided to stay stagnant and not get in the way.
Granted, this was at the tail end of what became a nearly two-minute shift, but being able to recover quickly and get back to his game is something he’s going to have to strengthen. And again, it’s probably just some NHL debut nerves kicking in when he got frazzled, as he was cool, calm and collected for most of the game.

Other notes

– Whenever there’s an opportunity to be physical, he’ll take it. There were multiple instances where he pinched up in the offensive zone when Pettersson stepped up into the offensive zone and shut down a breakout opportunity for the Capitals. And whenever a puck carrier dumped the puck past Pettersson, he made sure to make a little contact to make the opposition uncomfortable.
– Very strong and comfortable skater. He’s quick on his feet and has excellent edge work to build his forward skating momentum into a strong backpedal to swiftly change his positioning.
– Speaking of positioning, Pettersson was consistently in the right spots, which helped limit the opposition. He was great at the net front, not allowing anybody to gain a favourable position on him and tying up opposing players away from the puck.
– Confident as a puck carrier. There were times when he rushed his decision-making with it, but that end-to-end rush speaks for itself. For a defensive defenceman, there shouldn’t be any worry about his ability to make that breakout/outlet pass up the ice from his own end.
Here is what Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet had to say regarding the rookie’s NHL debut:
“I’m a really big fan of the kid,” Tocchet shared with excitement. “How many games he plays? I don’t know at this point, but I think he’s just going to get better. He’s got that swagger. He goes into piles and blows some people up. He’s not scared to do that, and he can stop cycles. That’s what we need. He’s that young defenceman that [we] can really build off.”
Canucks.com’s Chris Faber chatted with Pettersson post-game to discuss his NHL debut:
“I mean, it’s different from down in the AHL, but yeah, think I fit in pretty good in my first couple of shifts. I think I grew into the game more and more, and just having these guys around you, it’s helped so much too. They talked a lot, and it helped me a lot. So yeah, it feels good to have them support me. It was a great game,” said Pettersson.
Pettersson would finish the game pointless, with a plus-one rating, two hits and one block in 10:37 minutes of ice time. But there were so many more promising plays from him in this game that should leave Canucks fans very excited for Pettersson’s future in Vancouver. And we might get to see him play again soon as he remains with the team heading on the road for their three-game road trip.
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