TEAMMATES DISH ON SWEDISH ROOKIE
Consensus is the ‘kid’ Pettersson quiet until he gets to know you
Elias Pettersson’s on-ice personality glowed from the moment he stepped on the ice for his first preseason game with the Vancouver Canucks.
He didn’t score in that mid-September game, but that didn’t matter. He did everything else. He dazzled with puck skills. He stood out as the best player on the ice.
And then there was the season opener, where he scored one of the finest goals Vancouver has ever seen.
Two months later, the buzz when he collects the puck still picks up.
But off the ice, he’s an athlete Vancouver is still getting to know.
There are plenty of sports personalities who’ve made their mark on Rain City over the years: the Sedins, Kesler, Naslund, Bertuzzi, Bure, Linden, Passaglia, Buono, Reeves, Sinclair and Nash to name but a few.
Pettersson will no doubt join that group one day.
And though he finds himself in front of cameras and reporters most days, where there have been moments in which his steely glare has drawn attention, or where a dry joke has cracked up his interlocutors, he mostly remains a quiet soul according to those who have come to know him best.
Brock Boeser, still a relatively fresh face in Vancouver himself, is Pettersson’s roommate on the road. He also lives near the 20-year-old centre and sees the young Swede often away from the rink.
“He’s a quiet kid at first,” Boeser said when queried about the young Swede, who is just 17 months younger than the Minnesota native. “I think he’s kind of like me, quiet at first until he gets to know people around him. Then he opens up.”
Being roommates means there’s plenty of time to chat on the road.
“We’ll talk about the game. We’ve talked about our families, what they do, his friends back home,” Boeser said. “He’s a funny kid, got a dry sense of humour. He’s always in a good mood.”
Nikolay Goldobin is another teammate who’s made a connection and is proving to be a regular companion.
And while the Russian is three years Pettersson’s senior, that hasn’t been a barrier.
The two dressed up as Minions at Halloween, for example.
“Both young guys, we like similar things,” Goldobin said about their quick off-ice connection, which in many ways mimics their on-ice chemistry. “And I still feel a little like I’m new to the team too.”
“Both Europeans,” he added, suggesting their status as cultural outsiders overlapped. The duo are two of six Canucks forwards who hail from outside of North America.
In similar terms, Boeser noted, Pettersson also has the “Swedish guys.”
Veteran teammates Alex Edler and Loui Eriksson, along with goalies Jacob Markstrom and Anders Nilsson all bring a touch of home.
Eriksson, who has known Pettersson’s junior teammate Jonathan Dahlen for years, took the two young Swedes out for dinner on the eve of training camp. Dahlen, who played with Pettersson in Timra, is now with the Canucks’ American Hockey League affiliate in Utica.
Eriksson remembers his own transition to North American life 13 years ago with the Dallas Stars and figured he should extend to his new young teammates a welcoming hand with a familiar cultural bent.
Edler, now the second-eldest player on the squad at 32, thinks back to how the older players on the team helped him along when he was a rookie finding his way in the National Hockey League, a dozen seasons ago.
It’s only natural that he’d look to do the same for Pettersson.
“He’s a pretty quiet guy, like a lot of Swedes,” Edler said. “You can tell that he’s very serious. He wants to get better. He cares. He wants to learn. He’s a good guy.”
Underneath that quiet shell is immense focus, said Edler.
“I think like everyone else ... he likes to compete, to play in every situation. I think him, and maybe myself too, you might not see it on the outside, but it’s there on the inside.”
In conversations with the media, Pettersson will sometimes pause, looking for the word he hopes will best suit his meaning.
That’s something he does away from the rink, too.
“He asks me about English, sometimes he doesn’t know words,” Boeser said.
The team’s other rookie, Adam Gaudette, echoes the “quiet kid” observation.
But that doesn’t mean he’s lonely. Gaudette and Pettersson may be among the team’s young players, but there are plenty of others within a year or two in age.
And that’s helped Pettersson find moments to lift the lid a touch.
“(Having) a lot of young guys in the room makes it easier to connect,” Gaudette said. “Once you get to know (Pettersson) he opens up a little. He’s a funny kid.”
Boeser figured some of this quietness is about Pettersson feeling his place in the social hierarchy of a group he just joined.
“He’s a super nice kid. I think it’s just his personality, he’s kind of a shy kid,” he said. “(But) also as a young guy, you look to see what the older guys are doing. You don’t want to push any boundaries.”
Ben Brown, the team’s director of media relations, has noted that the high standard Pettersson sets for himself extends from the ice into the dressing room and out towards the media and the broader public.
“I think he sets a pretty high standard,” he said. “He’s thinking about what he wants to say, before he’s asked a question. For a (teenage rookie) to be aware of that, of the power of what his message is, puts him in a class all his own.
“He has a good sense for what others are going through and an ability to relate to that and he doesn’t let that go to his head.”
Brown said a conversation the Canucks’ official media team filmed early in the season with Pettersson’s parents, Torbjorn and Irene, still stands out.
Irene said her son was “still the same as he (was) before all the fame and all the prizes last year.”
Brown noted her pride in her son’s even keel.
“I thought that was a pretty powerful thing,” he said.
He’s a super nice kid. I think it’s just his personality, he’s kind of a shy kid. (But) also as a young guy, you look to see what the older guys are doing. You don’t want to push any boundaries.