PENTICTON, B.C. — Two of the Vancouver Canucks’ most exciting prospects, Jonathan Lekkerimäki and Elias Pettersson, have spent a lot of time together over the past year.
They were both drafted in Montreal at the 2022 NHL Draft and were teammates with Örebro HK in the SHL last season and for Team Sweden at the world juniors this past December. They transitioned to the American League toward the end of last season together, debuting at the same time in North American professional hockey.
Now, on the eve of debuting at the Penticton Young Stars tournament, they’re teammates again. And roommates. And on the verge of wearing Canucks sweaters in a competitive environment for the first time in their professional careers.
Tightly knit and bonded further over the past few weeks by their shared accommodation in Vancouver from which they’ve explored the city and dined out at local restaurants in Yaletown with various teammates, there should be no mistaking that Pettersson and Lekkerimäki are very different types of players and very different people.
There’s a lightning and thunder dynamic between the two, effectively.
Lekkerimäki is the former first-round pick and the goal-scoring dynamo. After a miserable draft plus-one campaign, Lekkerimäki found his game last season. He’ll enter the Young Stars tournament, and Canucks main camp, with high expectations following an MVP-level performance at the world juniors and one of the most prolific goal-scoring seasons we’ve ever seen at the SHL level from a U20 player.
“It was so fun to watch and to be around him all day long last season,” says Pettersson of having a front-row seat to the Lekkerimäki snipe show. “Working with him in the gym, skating with him on the ice, we have so much fun.
“His timing is so good, he can just find those areas. Then there’s the shot, as well, you’ve seen it,” Pettersson continues, elaborating on what makes Lekkerimäki special.
“When you play against him it’s so hard to know when he’s going to shoot, when he’s going to make a play, when he’s going to make a move. It makes him difficult to defend. Defending him on a two-on-one in practice, it’s not a fun place to be. You’d definitely rather have a D there!”
In contrast with Lekkerimäki’s sizzle, Pettersson is the big, steady, authoritative defensive-minded defender. With a pro-ready frame and deceptively dynamic feet — with absolutely no “for a player his size” qualifier needed — Pettersson has quickly gone from a third-round dart throw for the club in June of 2022 and emerged as a prospect with a unique profile.
He’s also earned some respect internally for his mature understanding of the game-within-the-game, and the impact he can make physically at the professional level.
It didn’t take Pettersson long to impress that aspect of his game on Canucks coaches and development staff. In his very first weekend of games at the American League level, Pettersson objected sternly to a late hit thrown on Lekkerimäki. Just a few shifts into his North American professional career, Pettersson got after the Colorado Eagles player who threw the hit without hesitation.
“Obviously he’s got my back,” says Lekkerimäki, recalling the incident. “He loves to play that physical game, but we can make some plays together too.”
“Hey it happens,” laughs Pettersson, recalling that telling sequence from his cameo appearance with the Abbotsford Canucks last season. “I think everybody on this team is going to stick up for each other. It was just instinct, I didn’t think about it too much, I just skated down the ice!
“I don’t know if it’s part of my game to fight, but it’s part of my game to play hard. If something like that happens, I’m going to stand up for my teammate. Of course!”
As they enter this season, which begins with the prospect tournament this weekend and will continue at main camp in Penticton next week, the expectations around these two talented friends will diverge somewhat. Neither Lekkerimäki nor Pettersson is expected to break training camp with the NHL team necessarily, although Lekkerimäki could get a long look in the preseason, especially given the club’s strong desire, which was also expressed in the free agent signing of Daniel Sprong this summer as well, to add another right-handed one-shot goal scorer into the mix on the power play.
Pettersson faces a somewhat steeper path toward playing NHL games in the short term, which is as you’d expect from a defensive-minded defenceman.
That gap in expectations is matched, somewhat, by the opportunities likely to be afforded the two top Canucks prospects in the Penticton Young Stars lineup. Where Pettersson skated on the right side in practice, and may end up logging minutes on his off-side due to an overall lack of right-handed defensive depth on Vancouver’s Young Stars roster this weekend, Lekkerimäki was placed immediately at a Canucks prospect camp practice on Thursday on a top line with American League All-Star Arshdeep Bains and high-scoring centre Aatu Räty.
“The main goal for all of these guys is to set them up where they’re going to be successful,” explained first-year Abbotsford head coach Manny Malhotra on Friday. “With all eyes on the organization on them, you want them to show well. Putting him with (Räty and Bains) is a good situation, they’re obviously very offensive-minded guys, but they have the wherewithal too to be smart defensively and communicate with him.”
The emphasis on the defensive side of the game is a crucial one for Lekkerimäki, especially given the positional demands and sky-high work rate that’s expected of Canucks wingers in executing Rick Tocchet’s system. Winning battles on the wall, back-checking inexhaustibly and in position to establish the club’s neutral zone wedge and avoiding turnovers at the offensive blue line are non-negotiable staples for any prospective Canucks player hoping to win the trust of Vancouver’s reigning Jack Adams winning bench boss.
This is partly why Lekkerimäki used his summer to focus on strength and conditioning training in preparing himself to compete at the next level.
“Getting bigger and stronger was my focus this summer, and on the ice, just making some plays, winning puck battles and hopefully I’ll score some goals too,” said Lekkerimäki of his offseason regimen. “It’s why I did lots of lifting, and putting in hours in the gym with conditioning training.”
Pettersson’s main area of focus, in contrast, focused on moving the puck quickly and making reads on the ice at the pace necessary to transition play effectively in the North American professional game.
“When you play here, you have to be so fast making the play,” Pettersson noted. “So I was working this summer on getting information before getting the puck.
“Mikael Samuelsson and all of the coaches have really emphasized for me that I have to scan, and make a decision on what to do with the puck before I even get it.”
Picking pucks off of the wall and scanning the ice to assess your options before even possessing the puck isn’t a straightforward easy thing to train during the summer months. In order to mimic game reps, however, and drill down on turning retrievals into clean exits, Pettersson spent much of the season skating Örebro HK’s J20 team.
“It’s one of those things you have to get the reps, so you have to put the work in,” Pettersson says. “That work pays off when you get it on your backhand on the ice, and it feels natural to make the play really fast.”
For Pettersson and Lekkerimäki, their offseason will come to an abrupt end on Friday night when Vancouver’s prospects play the Oilers prospects at the South Okanagan Events centre. As their summer ends, their NHL journey is just beginning, and they’ll go through that process together in the short term.
“Look it’s about managing expectations,” Malhotra said when asked about Lekkerimäki specifically and the opportunity ahead of him this weekend in the Okanagan. “Obviously the draft is a huge part of a young player’s career and it’s a big highlight, but once you get into this situation, you’re going against men that are competing for jobs. And that’s very different. A big thing is making sure that they’re comfortable in this environment.”
And a big thing that can help Lekkerimäki and Pettersson be comfortable in this environment is the familiarity and friendship they’ve been able to build with one another over the past year.
“He’s one of my best friends,” notes Lekkerimäki of Pettersson. “I spend a lot of time with him and it’s a lot of fun. It’s helped (with the adjustment) for sure.”
(Top photos of Elias Pettersson and Jonathan Lekkerimäki: Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)
