LATEST | The genius behind the Canucks' selecting Elias Pettersson finally identified

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Felip Gosselin
November 8, 2023 (8:33 PM)

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The 2017 Draft will go down in history as a turning point for the Canucks, the year they landed the fifth overall and were given to opportunity to land the superstar Swede Elias Pettersson.

PETTEY, NOT A UNANIMOUS CHOICE?

Trevor Linden, the former Canucks captain and team President of Hockey Ops, was on Sportsnet650 last and dropped a bombshell regarding the Canucks draft intentions back then. Linden revealed that Jim Benning's preffered selection wasn't sold in Pettey and that he probably would've chosen a different player.

Linden pushed hard so that the scouting staff would back their words more so that they would avoid the 2016 disaster (Juolevi VS. Tkachuk). Here's the sequence:

�'I wasn't happy with our process and that was the first year Judd Brackett had taken over and I didn't like how our meetings went so I pushed Judd to really step up and run the meetings... and I really pushed our management group hard to have Judd and our guys make the pick. Jim wasn't sold and if he had his choice, he would've taken different players.''

Now that it's history, we can have a better overlook of the situation and say that the Canucks definitely made the right choice. Elias Pettersson has grown into a very special player and the players that went afterwards never lived up to their full potential. Cody Glass (Vegas), Lias Andersson (New York R), Casey Mittelstadt (Buffalo), Michael Rasmussen (Detroit).