Elias Pettersson, the coaching change and killing penalties
Miller spoke about what it was like playing with Pettersson.
“You mentioned Pettersson, I’ve been his biggest critic, Tim loves him,” said Scott. “I can’t stand him and I don’t know why. I assume he has a terrible work ethic. I’ve questioned all that about him and I’ve never met him, it’s just a perception I get from him.”
That is a very strong impression of someone Scott hasn’t met. Keep in mind, Boudreau once called Pettersson the hardest working guy on the ice during a practice last season. That was when Pettersson was going through his first-half slump.
Back to Miller. He talked about playing on Pettersson’s wing and the differences between playing centre or wing.
“You know, it’s funny because when we play together, even over the last two years…he was the centre but I took the faceoffs,” said Miller. “When I lost it, you’re not switching, so I’m staying in the defensive zone or centre ice. There’s not a whole lot of change, to be honest. We both have a good understanding of how to play both. He obviously has less experience playing wing than I do. But he’s so talented and the skill, you can pick it up at any time. As we saw last year, I mean, the second half of the year, he was borderline unstoppable. So you know, he’s a really good, good player, definitely a guy you want on your side with that much skill level he has.”
Boudreau replacing Travis Green behind the bench really brought new life into the Canucks last season. Miller talked about the poor start under Green and what Boudreau brought as head coach.
“I think the coaching change and like the atmosphere change I think that was good for a lot of players,” he said. “Nothing foul towards the coaches we had with Travis being the head coach, Travis was great for our group but I think that the fresh start really seemed to light a spark. I mean, for Petey, especially because once Bruce got there he was like we just talked about. He was so good.
“At the beginning of the season when Travis was there, we just couldn’t win a game. It didn’t matter what we did…We were losing every game three to two because our penalty kill gave up two or three goals a game. We just couldn’t keep the puck out.”
Speaking of the penalty kill, Miller spoke about his role in that.
“I really like playing on the penalty kill,” he said. “I take a lot of pride in it. I take a lot of faceoffs too, so I think that’s good as I like to have that chance to wind the puck down the ice and you know, that’s what is something Bruce did when he came. He got Petey on the penalty kill and some of them are more skilled guys on the penalty kill. But I’ll tell you right now his reads because of how good he has on the power play, I think that helps. When the powerplay guys PK, they can kind of think one step ahead as if they were on the man advantage.”
It looks very likely that Miller will still be with the Canucks once training camp begins next month. What will they do with him by the trade deadline next season? We shall see.