Watch as Canucks Elias Pettersson (RePetey) scores two goals and adds an assist for Sweden in the Four Nations Tournament in Finland – Canucksarmy
Get all your Elias Pettersson jokes out of the way, we’re talking about Canucks 2022 third round pick, left shot defenseman Elias Pettersson today.
Earlier this week, we talked about Pettersson and fellow Canucks, Lucas Forsell, being selected to play for Sweden’s U20 team, which they sent to the Four Nations Tournament in Finland. We tuned in at five o’clock in the morning to see and see the two prospects perform, and on Friday Pettersson left.
Sweden faced Slovakia in the second match of the tournament and Pettersson came off, scoring two goals and adding a first assist.
The first goal saw Forsell enter the game and he made a nice move on the blue line to avoid a defender before the puck found Pettersson’s stick and he ripped it home for his first goal of the tournament.
Lucas Forsell makes a nice move on the blue line to go around a defender, the puck then finds Elias Pettersson (EP2), and he buries it.
Goal for EP2 and secondary assist for Forsell. ✅・・
The Canucks prospects gather for a Sweden goal. 🇸🇪 pic.twitter.com/29RSZbEd7v
— 🗖Chris Faber 🔥🎙 (@ChrisFaber39) August 26, 2022
We love seeing Canucks prospects string together a goal for Sweden and we could see a lot more of that with four Canucks prospects in the mix to make the team for Sweden at the 2023 World Juniors.
Pettersson’s second goal of the match was one of those, you have to be good to be lucky and lucky to be good type of goal. He fired a shot into traffic and it took a friendly bounce before finding the back of the net. We were set for a Pettersson hat-trick at the start of the match as he had scored twice in the first 40 minutes of the match.
Elias Pettersson (EP2) has a two-goal game for Sweden. This one bounced around before finding the back of the net.
Two 🚨goals🚨 for re-Petey today! pic.twitter.com/0tLAVNzkwQ
— 🗖Chris Faber 🔥🎙 (@ChrisFaber39) August 26, 2022
The offense didn’t stop there for Pettersson as he added a primary assist late in the game with a big pass through the neutral zone that set up a partial layup.
The camera missed him, but this is a great pass to set up a partial breakaway from Elias Pettersson (EP2) to set up another goal for Sweden.
re-Petey has two goals and an assist today. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/LB2HIMAVCt
— 🗖Chris Faber 🔥🎙 (@ChrisFaber39) August 26, 2022
We’ve talked about Pettersson being a big, physical defenseman, but the more we see him play, we see that he looks to have more offensive potential than we first thought. re-Petey likes to step up in the offensive zone and sneak into the gap looking for a one-timer.
His defensive play was once again excellent today as he used his combination of speed and strength to knock opponents off the puck. Overall, this was the best matchup we’ve seen from Pettersson in our early stages of looking at the prospect.
As for Forsell, he was moved down to the fourth line in this game but still managed to look like one of Sweden’s more dangerous forwards. Forsell flew there and looks to have a lot of confidence during the U20 game. This confidence likely comes from the success he had in the SHL last season and we hope to see Sweden make him part of their WJC roster in 2023.
The Four Nations tournament concludes on Saturday morning with Sweden playing against Finland for the chance to secure the Four Nations trophy.
We will continue to follow Pettersson and Forsell as they have played well so far in this short tournament and look to put a bow on the weekend by winning against Finland and taking home the trophy from the host country.
Be sure to check out this week’s Blackfish Report for all the updates on the Canucks’ prospects!