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Why Pettersson and Miller's lacklustre play is a bigger concern than Canucks' off-ice drama

23 December 2024Last Update :
Why Pettersson and Miller's lacklustre play is a bigger concern than Canucks' off-ice drama

Remember years ago when the NHL ran a “No soap operas, just hockey” marketing campaign? If only that slogan were true for the Vancouver Canucks these days.

The Canucks have lost seven of their last 10 games and are clinging on to a wild-card playoff spot by just a point, and yet neither of those developments is the big storyline in this city. The speculation and innuendo over the last week about Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller’s working relationship — and whether there’s a “rift” between them — has been non-stop. It ballooned out of control and became a national talking point over the weekend.

Quinn Hughes and Rick Tocchet both gave candid, insightful answers on the topic after Saturday’s morning skate that went viral on X.

Pettersson and Miller strongly refuted the speculation about their fractured relationship during their recent media availabilities, which also went viral.

Pettersson and Miller’s relationship was also discussed by the “Hockey Night in Canada” panel before and after the Canucks’ 5-4 overtime loss to the Ottawa Senators on Saturday night.

This has become a 24/7 soap opera nobody can escape. I don’t have any interest in fanning the flames of this off-ice drama, but even if you turn your attention to analyzing the Canucks’ on-ice performance, Pettersson and Miller are still at the centre of the story for the wrong reasons.

Pettersson has no points in his last six games. Miller has zero goals and four assists in six games since returning from a leave of absence. He also lost track of his defensive assignment and got brutally burned during Josh Norris’ short-handed goal and Jake Sanderson’s overtime winner.

When you zoom out, neither one of Vancouver’s star centres has played anywhere close to expectations this season.

Pettersson is barely on pace to crack 20 goals and 65 points despite being in the first year of a mammoth eight-year extension that carries an $11.6 million cap hit. His defensive play has been consistently sharp and impactful, but that feels like a hollow moral victory for a player being paid to produce at an elite level.

The problem, of course, is that this is about more than just a quiet first-half performance. Since last year’s All-Star break, Pettersson has scored just 16 goals and 57 points in 79 games between the regular season and playoffs.

He ranks 236th among NHL forwards with just six five-on-five goals in that span, according to Natural Stat Trick. Only 22 full-time centres in the NHL (minimum 500 minutes) have scored fewer five-on-five goals than Pettersson in this stretch and most of them are third- and fourth-liners.

When star players are slumping, it’s critical to look under the hood for possible explanations. If a player is still generating shots and scoring chances like normal, there’s a good chance their goal and point totals are mostly suffering because of bad finishing luck and their production should bounce back pretty quickly.

The big red flag with Pettersson is that many of his numbers point to a legitimate slip in the quality of his play.

Pettersson fired 257 shots on goal in 80 games during the 2022-23 season when he broke out with 102 points. He’s registered just 155 shots on goal in 79 games since the All-Star break, representing a nearly 40 percent drop-off in his shot volume.

Even when he is shooting, it’s with less speed and power. Pettersson was one of the league’s hardest shooters in 2022-23, racking up 214 shot attempts that clocked at least 70 miles per hour according to NHL Edge. This season, his average shot speed is down and he’s on pace for just 79 shot attempts clocked at 70 miles per hour or above. That’s a worrying fall-off.

This lines up with what we’re seeing too. When Pettersson first broke in as a rookie, he had a cannon of a one-timer you could build a power-play around. It was such a feared weapon that penalty killers would cheat to his side to take the one-timer away, which often meant extra space in the bumper for Bo Horvat to feast on. Nowadays, Pettersson only sparingly loads up for one-timers and rarely scores on them.

There’s been a noticeable drop-off in his skating ability as well. Pettersson’s always had a clunky, awkward skating stride, but in 2022-23 he ranked in the top 15 percent of all NHL forwards for speed bursts above 20 miles per hour. He was never a Nathan MacKinnon or Jack Hughes type of puck transporter, but he was still a quick, dynamic player who created a lot of offence off the rush. This season, he’s barely above the league average for speed bursts above 20 miles per hour.

He looks flat and lacks separating acceleration when carrying the puck, which has limited his offensive impact off the rush. It’s been hard for him to beat defenders one-on-one this year. This is where I go back to wondering about his previous knee tendinitis.

Pettersson revealed at the end of last season that he was playing through a bad knee from January onward, which preceded his production falling off a cliff in February. In training camp a few months ago, he described it as a “nagging” injury, while acknowledging they’ve found a way to work around it and saying it isn’t an issue. Is that still causing problems?

Regardless of whether his knee is still bothering him or not, it’s concerning to see such a stark drop-off in a number of these areas.

Unfortunately, Miller isn’t playing much better either.

The fiery 31-year-old appeared to be operating at less than 100 percent health early in the season — he missed most of preseason with an undisclosed injury and got banged up in an early season game against the Philadelphia Flyers. He’s scored 20 points in 23 games, which is a far cry from the career-high 103 points he piled up last year. He’s also mustered just one five-on-five goal and is generating shots on goal at the lowest rate of his career.

The deterioration of Miller’s two-way form is equally as notable as the decline in his offensive production. Miller’s been an up-and-down defensive player during various points of his Canucks tenure but since Tocchet’s hiring, he’s emerged as a standout two-way contributor. He’s tasked to duel against top lines and played arguably the best, most engaged defensive hockey of his career last season.

This year, he’s struggling to drive play and is seeing bad habits creep back into his game. Miller’s surface-level two-way results look good but that’s largely because he’s shared a ton of shifts with Quinn Hughes, who is the play-driving engine of this team. Miller’s played 128 five-on-five minutes away from Hughes, in which the Canucks have been outshot 63-34, controlled less than 40 percent of scoring chances and scored just two goals.

In other words, he’s overwhelmingly reliant on Hughes to drive the bus. And on top of that, he’s been at the centre of some key defensive lapses lately. He was given less than 16 minutes of ice-time in each of the club’s last two games.

Miller deserves some slack because it’s only been six games since he took a leave of absence for personal reasons. But it’s fair to wonder if he can fully bounce back to last season’s elite form.

The veteran playmaking forward had the highest PDO of all NHL forwards (minimum 500 five-on-five minutes) last year. In simple terms, this means the Canucks got a lot of fortunate bounces both offensively and defensively with Miller on the ice, which possibly exaggerated his two-way impact. That could explain why the Canucks had a commanding plus-27 goal differential during Miller’s five-on-five shifts last season despite the shot and scoring chance differentials being practically dead even during his minutes.

Without strong puck luck, is Miller a good top-line player rather than the elite first-line centre he was universally recognized as last season?

When you look at the top 16 teams in the NHL by points percentage, Pettersson and Miller are the only top centre duo to combine for less than 10 even-strength goals. That’s problematic because the Canucks’ one-two punch down the middle should be an advantage over most teams, not to mention they cost nearly $20 million against the cap.

Top 2 Centres’ Scoring (Playoff teams)
Team Top 2 Centres Even-Strength Goals
Oilers
McDavid, Draisaitl
29
Jets
Scheifele, Namestnikov
22
Devils
Hughes, Hischier
21
Stars
Hintz, Duchene
21
Lightning
Point, Cirelli
20
Matthews, Tavares
19
Avalanche
MacKinnon, Mittelstadt
17
Flames
Kadri, Backlund
17
Golden Knights
Eichel, Karlsson
14
Capitals
Strome, Dubois
14
Panthers
Barkov, Bennett
14
Wild
Rossi, Eriksson Ek
13
Kings
Kopitar, Byfield
13
Hurricanes
Aho, Kotkaniemi
12
Utah
Hayton, Cooley
10
Canucks
Miller, Pettersson
9

The Canucks are barely above the playoff bar despite Hughes operating at an obscene, nearly unimaginable level of dominance. Before Vancouver decides to go all-in at the trade deadline like last year, management must have confidence that their top two centres can start playing like stars again. Otherwise, making aggressive win-now moves isn’t going to be enough to push them to true contender status.

Pettersson and Miller have the talent and track record to bounce back as top players in this league. They need to start lifting their share of the weight again, otherwise this franchise is at risk of flushing an MVP-calibre season from Hughes down the toilet. That’s a bigger worry to me than any of the recent off-ice drama.

(Photos of J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson: Bob Frid / Imagn Images)

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