Canucks: Jake DeBrusk was ‘middle man’ between Pettersson and Miller

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To say Jake DeBrusk’s first season in Vancouver was a whirlwind is probably an understatement.

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He was joining a team that was coming off a strong season, looking like they were going places. Sure, they probably weren’t going to repeat as division winners, but they’d played hard in 2023-24, they played a fun two-way system, they had a couple of star centres, a superstar defenceman, a player-friendly coach and of course there’s Vancouver itself, a great place to live.

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DeBrusk was signed to help improve the team that had pushed the Edmonton Oilerseventual Stanley Cup finalists, to the brink. And on the ice, he delivered, scoring 28 goals, a career high.

But very little else went to plan. The Canucks didn’t stumble out of the gate, indeed their start suggested maybe they’d continue on the hot streak they’d rode most of the previous season. But then things went south. J.T. Miller struggled to make an impact as an injury suffered in training camp didn’t clear up.

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And Elias Pettersson struggled too, for reasons that remain somewhat unclear, though there are a collection of clues. He’d suffered some knee tendinitis the previous spring, which apparently hampered his off-season preparation. But even so, team management felt he should have arrived in training camp in better shape. He wasn’t skating anywhere near as well as he used to, nor was he firing the puck like he had before.

Further, he appeared to be struggling with confidence; some posited it had to do with the serious rift that finally developed between him and Miller.

Whatever the case, both players struggled and when the team’s strategy is designed to lean on two players who are struggling, its almost certain the team’s result will sink, just as they did for the Canucks in 2024-25.

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DeBrusk found himself sitting in a stall that just about right between where Miller and Pettersson sat and clearly the scene was an awkward one at times.

In early November, after some sort of incident in the dressing room, likely following a home game vs. the Nashville Predators where Miller was benched for a time, Miller told the team he needed to take a leave of absence for personal reasons.

Miller taking a leave was a lot to take, DeBrusk admitted to the Edmonton Journal’s Jim Matheson this week.

“That was the most intense. As a guy who had just met him, you hope he’s OK. You don’t know what’s going on. But everything happens for a reason,” he said.

DeBrusk is as friendly a hockey player as you can find. He’s friendly with his teammates, he’s friendly with fans, he’s friendly with the media.

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“J.T. had me over for dinner a couple of times and I love him a lot. I was sitting beside Petey in the dressing room and we hung out a lot. It became a thing where I was almost the middle man,” DeBrusk said.

“In all fairness I wish the best for J.T. and his family, They welcomed me. For me it’s unfortunate. I wanted to play longer with them but it’s not my decision. Trades happen all the time.”

The team’s roster has evolved since then, with the defence corps being overhauled. The forward group is much the same, with management at the moment speaking very positively about what Filip Chytil can bring to the table as a second-line centre, despite avowals earlier this year that they needed to add another second-line forward, likely a centre.

That hasn’t happened.

But DeBrusk sees the team’s strengths — the defence corps and in net, assuming Thatcher Demko is fully healed and able to play like his old, healthy self — and figures that’s a good place to start. They need more goals, but at least they won’t be giving up too many.

“Yeah, we need more goals but I’d rather have that (issue) than no defence. We’ll have to win some 2-1 games, I guess,” he said.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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