Canucks’ Adam Foote explains Elias Pettersson’s low 5v5 ice time vs. Penguins

Following their 5-1 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins, the primary focus of conversation surrounding the Vancouver Canucks was Head Coach Adam Foote and his questionable deployment of top centre Elias Pettersson.

Pettersson saw just 9:28 minutes of 5v5 ice time, which was the lowest of the four centremen: Aatu Räty (15:06), Nils Aman (10:31), and Max Sasson (10:22). Fans became frustrated with the usage of their highest-paid player, especially when one considers the quality of centres behind Pettersson – all three of which who spent the majority of the 2024-25 campaign in the AHL.

Ahead of their final game of their five-game road trip, Foote met with the media in Nashville, who brought up Pettersson’s deployment:

“Why did he have the lowest ice time, five-on-five? Can you give me his ice time on the special teams? Do you remember it?” Foote asked.

To which the reporter replied, “Not offhand, no.”

“He was eight minutes special teams and probably two shifts in the last eight minutes, because we’re down 5-1,” Foote explained. “So when you’re playing eight minutes on special teams, you know, mainly because of our injuries, those are harder minutes; killing penalties and things like that. And then you take the three games in three and a half days, where you look at Washington, physical hockey team, three hard road games, and he played really good. So you try to manage hard penalty kill minutes, hard PK 1:20 shifts.

“When you’re getting eight minutes compared to the previous year, he’s probably, my guess is, he’s averaging four to five minutes special teams. So when you’re up in the eight-minute mark and you’re down 5-1, and you had three games in three and a half days, you’re trying to manage a guy physically, not put him in a place to get injured either. You know you’re playing those hard minutes in a game, and you want to win till the end, and we’re always in striking distance. Even at 5-1, we’re thinking about it like we gave him a couple more offensive draws or things like that to see if we get a quick one.

“But I would say when you look at the overall statistics, harder minutes are, in my opinion, going to be special team minutes, which, his are up from last year. So we really want to dig in it, and we can; he’s probably a minute on average, less five-on-five on the year, but probably two minutes, if we really focus on the PK of the last three or four games, compared to the first three, where he’s more of a PK guy. We wanted to get him in gradually so he wouldn’t get caught, where you have to go learn it when you play it, then he’s probably off a minute on five-on-five overall, but probably up to two good minutes on special teams.

“So you know that probably explains how we’re thinking. And he’s going to have harder minutes five-on-five right now, because he’s the most veteran centreman, so we’re going to have to put him probably in more starts in his end than we would prefer. But he’s really good at finding his guy off, faceoffs and things like that. So I gave the in-depth , and I hope that answered your question.”

You can listen to the entire answer here: