Depending on which draft board you’re looking at, the Canucks may have gone way off of it when they selected Elias Pettersson fifth overall.
Plenty of draft rankings saw Pettersson as a mid-first round pick. ESPN’s Corey Pronman had him ranked 17th, North American Central Scouting and Sportsnet’s Jeff Marek had him 15th, and International Scouting Services had him all the way down at 20th overall.
On the other hand, many rankings had Pettersson in the top-10 of the draft: TSN’s Bob McKenzie and Craig Button, The Hockey News’s Ryan Kennedy, Hockey Prospect, Dobber Prospects, and Future Considerations all had him in the range of 5-9th overall, as did some independent, analytics-based rankings.
Clearly, the Canucks also had Pettersson high on their draft board: they had their pick of all the second-tier centres after the Dallas Stars and Colorado Avalanche took the top two defencemen in Miro Heiskanen and Cale Makar. While many expected them to take WHL standout Cody Glass, they instead looked to Sweden.
In my opinion, it’s a great pick. Pettersson seems to me the most likely player, outside of the top two of Nico Hischier and Nolan Patrick, to become a high-end, first-line centre. He’s a shifty playmaker who can beat players one-on-one with his stickhandling and skating or pick apart defences with his vision and passing.
The one knock on Pettersson is his size. While he has NHL height at 6’2”, he is very skinny, weighing in at 164 lbs at the NHL Combine. He has plenty of time to fill out his frame over the next couple years, however, and you have to wonder what his ceiling is: if he can put up near point-per-game numbers against men in the Allsvenskan at 17 and skinny, how far can he go once he puts on more muscle?
His performance in the Allsvenskan this past season is essentially unparalleled. Canucks Army’s prospect system couldn’t find a single comparable player.
Here is the pGPS data for Pettersson.
— Ryan Biech (@ryanbiech) June 24, 2017
He produced so many points in his draft year... that no one matched him#Canucks pic.twitter.com/8ivdXsjex5
The only teenager that scored more than Pettersson was his teammate, Jonathan Dahlen. Yes, the same Dahlen that the Canucks acquired from the Ottawa Senators for Alex Burrows. Yes, it’s very tempting to label the two Swedish teammates, a centre and a winger, the heirs apparent to the Sedins.
Let’s go to the quotes from people who have watched Pettersson play a lot more than I have:
His former coach, Roger Forsberg, described his intelligence as his best attribute: “His biggest gift is that he has an incredible understanding of the game. He sees the game from every angle and he is ahead of you all the time, so he always knows what to do with the puck. He finds solutions in the offensive zone that only he can see.”
ISS scout Ben Gallant: “Liked this player, high end effort on each shift. Good puck protection ability and will take hit to make plays, crafty hands and vision. Skating ability is good with change of pace and lateral movement. Tools to be a playmaker at the NHL level.”
McKeen’s Hockey likes all aspects of his offensive game: “He has impressive creativity both at top speed and from a passive position such as holding the slot during the power play. His decision making is remarkably well formed for his age level...While he is also an above-average skater, he does not show it all that often, as he generally works to slow the game down, preferring to fool his defender through a quick turn than to beat him with pure speed.”
Hockey Prospect scout Mark Edwards thinks the concern about his weight is overblown: “He is tall and slim as expected but I think some people are being overly harsh when it comes to his weight...Pettersson told me has a personal trainer and he is actively working on getting stronger He’s well aware of what he needs to do and is driven to play in the NHL.”
Craig Button suggests Ryan Johansen as an NHL comparable and describes Pettersson as a “highly creative and skilled centre who finds ways to maneuver the puck into scoring positions."
This is an exciting pick that shows a preference for skill over size, intelligence over physicality. It’s a pick that gives the Canucks some hope for a succession plan at centre for Henrik Sedin.
It’s also a bold pick, preferring the opinion of their own scouts (such as, perhaps, Thomas Gradin, who has found some skill for the Canucks in Sweden in the past) to the consensus opinion of the draft rankings.
