According to a report from Cam Robinson of Elite Prospects, the Vancouver Canucks have taken superstar center Elias Pettersson off the NHL trade block following the J.T. Miller trade ahead of the upcoming 4 Nations Face-Off tournament.
"The 4 Nations break won't prohibit teams from making trades, but sources indicate that the Canucks have officially pulled Elias Pettersson off of the trade market," Robinson posted to his X account Monday morning.
The 4 Nations break won't prohibit teams from making trades, but sources indicate that the Canucks have officially pulled Elias Pettersson off of the trade market.
— Cam Robinson (@Hockey_Robinson) February 10, 2025
Pettersson, 26, has struggled to find his form offensively for most of the 2024-25 regular season, stumbling to 11 goals, 23 assists, and 34 points in 49 games. The Swede, a former 100-point-scorer, has just two assists and six shots on goal in his last five games for the Canucks, extrapolating his difficulty getting involved in a meaningful way in the o-zone.
Of course, it does not help that Miller, when he was in Vancouver, was also struggling to produce as the rift between the two players took its toll on both them and the rest of the Canucks players. Further to that point, captain Quinn Hughes had been playing with an apparent injury, sporting a splint on his left hand before suffering a new reported oblique injury that has held him off the ice in a game setting since Jan. 31.
Realistically speaking, anything that could have gone wrong for the Canucks has gone wrong for the Canucks this season. Hughes, Pettersson, and Miller all missed time, and the latter was traded just over halfway through the season.
Starting goalie Thatcher Demko took quite a while to round back into form, and he missed time through injury as well. Ditto for Filip Hronek, who missed two months due to an operation to correct a lower-body issue. Dakota Joshua has not been able to replicate the success of the last two seasons after a grueling battle with testicular cancer over the summer.
Pettersson's struggles are just the tip of the iceberg for the Canucks, and while he assuredly would have fetched a haul on the NHL trade market, Vancouver appears to be steadfast in their commitment to the former No. 5 overall pick with just months to go before his no-trade protection kicks in on July 1.