After a couple of losses to beatable teams on this road trip, it appears the core of this team realized they needed to turn things up a notch or two. Elias Pettersson has admitted to not playing his best hockey as of late, and the Swedish young-gun went to work on Sunday and got the Canucks involved early on.
On the power play, Pettersson was able to feed his captain a very pretty, uptempo pass with some heat on it. Bo Horvat, standing open in front of the net between the faceoff circles, managed to get his stick on the ice and direct it up and over the Columbus goaltender. Power play marker that got the monkey off their back and gave the momentum to the road team.
Pettersson didn’t stop there. He added a goal of his own, a deflection as well and a very difficult one to say the least. Coming across the circle with some speed, a shot was fired from the point. Moving across the ice and towards the puck, Pettersson successfully tipped the rocketing puck down off of the ice and back up over the goaltender once more. A beautiful masterpiece by the Swede.
https://twitter.com/Canucks/status/1234275069125447682
The kid added another point to end the game with a goal and two primary assists. He needed to step up and he did. His game was at its full potential and if coach Green decided to play Pettersson in the dying minutes, the Canucks may have skated away with two points.