Coming from a guy like Linden…..damn. That’s as candid as I’ve ever heard Trevor. Always the diplomat, I have never heard him “callout” an individual player like that.dangler wrote: ↑Fri Apr 25, 2025 12:38 pm Linden with some interesting comments on Petey!
Starts about 10 minutes in.
https://www.reddit.com/r/canucks/commen ... ay_in_the/
A thought…..
When Linden talked about Pettersson struggling to start the season that Green was fired, commenting like he looked like a guy who couldn’t even play in the AHL, and then BB came in and the team rebounded and looked good up until they realized they can’t win that way and they have to “play Travis hockey” so they turned to Tocchet who got them doing that 200 foot game again with systems. Pettersson started strong under Boudreau and had a decent finish when Tocchet replaced Bruce. He then had a decent start under Rick the next season but finished slowly as the demand for 200 foot buy-in increased. Other players also seemed to struggle in the last 3 months of last season despite the good finish in the standings.
Could it be that Pettersson, and perhaps a few others, are simply 100 foot players? Petey has shown us he can score and he has shown us he can play smart defensive zone hockey, but rarely do you see both of those in the same game, let alone the same shift. Maybe he just can’t transition well?
When I look at Miller and Boeser, and obviously Hughes, these are the guys that led the charge for buying in under Tocchet during the summer of 2023 and the following breakout season. They had their best years and were far and away our best players at both ends of the ice. They put in the work but they also had the ability to take the effort and apply it in transition from offense to defense and back to offense. Maybe that is something that Pettersson does not have the mental flexibility to do?