![]() He can sustainably finish individually and as a line at higher-than-normal levels, but the efficiency with which he and linemate Andrei Kuzmenko buried shots last season is very difficult to replicate. Pettersson will have an uphill climb to repeat his mammoth point production. If you can consistently score 100 points and rank as one of the league’s best two-way centres, you’re not just an elite player, you’re a unicorn. It’s really hard to be exceptionally dominant over your peers on a year-in, year-out basis. Bogged down by a nagging wrist injury last season, he couldn’t quite sustain those epic heights, scoring 40 goals and 85 points in 74 games instead. Matthews, widely considered a top-five centre in the NHL, scored 60 goals and 106 points in 73 games in 2021-22, finished top 10 in Selke voting and won the Hart Trophy. Only three out of those eight players - Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Matthew Tkachuk - did it again in 2022-23. In 2021-22, there were eight forwards who crossed the 100-point mark. ![]() That’s the difference between being a top-10 centre in the NHL and being one of the best on the planet. All it comes down to is whether he can do it again. The question now isn’t about whether Pettersson can take another step. Pettersson skipped a level when he went from being a player who’d never scored at a point-per-game clip in an NHL season to notching 102 points and finishing seventh in Selke Trophy voting. Last year wasn’t just the breakout everybody was looking for. This is a player that’s long since broken out but has an opportunity this season to reach ever more rarified air … Elias Pettersson So which Canucks players are most likely to break out this season? Let’s get to it.įrom top-10 centre to one of the best players in the game In considering which Canucks players could breakout this upcoming season, and how likely it is to occur, we thought we’d best go through this exercise and profile what a breakout would look like for various Canucks players, evaluate what it would take, what it could mean to the club and how likely it is to occur this upcoming season - by assigning a likelihood score out of 10 in the case of each player. ![]() The Canucks are also going to need their best players to be at (or near) the apex of their powers, and are going to need at least a few depth pieces already in-house to step up and put together “breakout” campaigns. If it’s going to be enough, it’s going to take more than the free-agent acquisitions fitting in seamlessly. Will it be enough to end the going-on nine-year drought since Vancouver last hosted a playoff home date in 2015? Over the course of this offseason, the club has attempted to improve the size and defensive IQ of its back end, while adding bottom-six centres capable of helping out the penalty kill and (hopefully) fattening up the club’s forward ranks. ![]() Miller has scored nearly 100 points, or in which Elias Pettersson has been one of the five most impactful two-way forwards in the sport, or in which Thatcher Demko has been at fringe Vezina finalist level, the club has still been a perennial also ran for the Stanley Cup playoffs. Over the past few seasons, the Canucks haven’t been able to count on enough depth contributions throughout their lineup. A team’s supporting cast needs to be good enough to give those star players an opportunity to make a difference when it counts. In a highly variable, weak link sport like hockey, your best players can only do so much. This troubling statistic is both a compliment to Hughes’ personal abilities, and a testament to the problem that Jim Rutherford, Patrik Allvin and Rick Tocchet have to solve this season and in the years to come.
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