Elias Pettersson has returned from an injury that kept him out for eight games, but he says he’s still feeling the effects of it. In conversation with Sportsnet’s Iain MacIntyre, the Vancouver Canucks’ top centre said that his latest ailment is a nagging injury that he’ll have to deal with “probably for the rest of the season.”

“I think I was doing okay,” Pettersson said. “But injuries happen. Now that I’m back, I’m just trying to work my hardest out there and play the right way… It’s going to be a nagging injury for a while, probably the rest of the season. But I can play with it. In some situations, there’s some pain, but I can push through it.”

Pettersson’s injury kept him out for eight games. After playing in the Canucks’ December 5th game against the Utah Mammoth, which the Canucks lost by a final score of 5-1, Pettersson took warmups for the Canucks’ matchup with the Minnesota Wild the next night but did not play. Pettersson previously shared that when he took warmup for that game, he knew his injury would keep him from playing. While Pettersson didn’t divulge exactly what was ailing him or when he sustained the injury, he did share that it caused him to feel pain when shooting the puck.

“There was a lot of pain trying to shoot the puck, but it feels good now,” Pettersson told reporters last month. “You can feel bad off the ice, but when you get on the ice, it feels better. But yeah I tried but it was too much pain.”

In six games since returning from the injury, Pettersson has put up three goals and an assist, and has three points — two goals, one assist — over his last three games.

In the interview with MacIntyre, Pettersson also opened up about recent struggles in his personal life. Most notably, Pettersson talked about he and his wife Katelyn’s miscarriage, which Katelyn shared news of on social media last month. Their baby was due in July. You can read those quotes and the rest of what Pettersson had to say by reading the article over at Sportsnet.ca (linked here).