Rick Tocchet Admits Vancouver Canucks Teammates Turned on Elias Pettersson but Believes He'll Bounce Back
Photo credit: Canucks Daily
As former Vancouver Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet gave his first exclusive interview since parting ways with the organization and joining the Philadelphia Flyers, he mentioned that some surprising things about forward Elias Pettersson.
In todays interview, Tocchet had quite a few soundbites for fans and members of the media to chew on, one of which involved clapping back at all those who think he quit on the team after just two seasons, one of which he won the Jack Adams award for the NHL's most valuable coach.
Rick Tocchet says Elias Pettersson's teammates lost confidence in him during the 2024-2025 season
One thing that ran true last season was the fact that it was publicly known that Rick Tocchet and Elias Pettersson did not fully see eye to eye on how the game should be played.
This was Further reinforced when he wanted the team to trade him over J.T. Miller amid the highly publicizes rift and drama plaguing the locker-room.
Now that he is no longer a apart of the organization, he could have laid it all out on the line exposing a lot that happened, but decided to say he thinks EP40 will have a huge bounce back year if he gains the confidence in himself and from his team who basically turned on him in that department.
«From the bottom of my heart, he is going to have a bounce back year,» Tocchet said. «He's a great kid. He's got to get his confidence for himself, but also his teammates. He's got to get his teammates to have confidence in him again.» - Tocchet
He also went on further to say some of his past comments about Pettersson were taken out of context and wanted to further clarify what he really meant by them.
«I made a comment a month or two ago about re-programming, and people freaked out in the city,» Tocchet said. «In today's game, it's a lot evolved Petey likes to come back and play kind of that slower game, and I think it affected him. I know that he wished he came in better shape last year, and I think he'll be more prepared, but you got to play that style. So when I talk about reprogramming, I was talking more of coming back, getting the puck and taking off. Or on the power play, when he gets the puck on the side there, when you beat pressure, that's the time you attack.» - Tocchet
In reality, for a former 100-point player, Petey had an abysmal season, and new head coach Adam Foote could just be that fresh voice in the room that leads him back to where we know he can be.
TRENDING NOW
