"It's not just on the ice, it's off the ice" that made the Vancouver Canucks want Marcus Pettersson on their squad for a long time following the team's drama this season.

“You can just see him settle things down.”

That’s how coach Rick Tocchet described the play of his new defenseman, Marcus Pettersson, after the Vancouver Canucks earned a 2-1 road win over the San Jose Sharks on Thursday.

The Canucks are now 2-0-1 since the 28-year-old defensive defenseman joined the lineup. They’ve given up four goals in total in those three games while missing their captain, Quinn Hughes. And on Thursday night, they leapfrogged the Calgary Flames to move back into the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference.

In the early going, Vancouver’s decision to pull the trigger on last week’s J.T. Miller trade looks like a win for all sides. 

Miller has four points in three games with the New York Rangers, which have won their last two games and are hanging around in the Eastern Conference playoff race. The Pittsburgh Penguins, who dealt Pettersson and forward Drew O’Connor to Vancouver in a secondary deal on Friday, are 1-0-1 since the trade and have added the Rangers’ top-13 protected first-round pick to their draft arsenal. 

The Canucks have gotten two goals from O’Connor, including Thursday’s penalty-shot game-winner in overtime. They also committed to Pettersson as a long-term anchor for their defense just five days after acquiring him, signing him to a six-year contract extension worth $33 million.

Canucks president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford has admired Pettersson’s game for years. 

In 2018, after just 53 career NHL games, the then-Penguins GM brought him to Pittsburgh in a 1-for-1 trade for Daniel Sprong. Barely a year later, Pettersson signed a five-year contract extension at a cap hit of just over $4 million, which has carried him through this season.

Speaking to the media on Thursday, Pettersson said his familiarity with Rutherford and other former members of the Penguins organization made it easy for him to commit to Vancouver quickly.

“I’ve had them before,” he said. “I know the way they run a team, and it's people that I know, so that helped me a lot.”

He’s relishing the idea of an extended playoff run in front of the rabid Vancouver fan base that showed up so strongly last spring. Meanwhile, the organization understands that Pettersson is the right kind of veteran voice to help guide the players out of the tumult that has defined their last few months.

“He's a leader in the room,” said Tocchet on Thursday, three games into Pettersson’s tenure in Vancouver. “It's not just on the ice, it's off the ice, why we signed him.”

On top of his familiarity with management, Pettersson’s former teammates also gave him a sense of what to expect from Tocchet, who served as an assistant to Mike Sullivan from 2014 to 2017, including the team’s two Stanley Cup wins. He’s also reunited with Kiefer Sherwood, a fellow rookie on the Anaheim Ducks back in 2018-19.

After all the drama that has swirled around the Canucks this season, Pettersson’s commitment to the team is a vote of confidence that things are now headed in the right direction — even while captain Quinn Hughes is missing game action due to an injury.

Pettersson identified his defense partner, Tyler Myers, as an important veteran voice in the room but didn’t leave it at that.

“There's a lot of guys that have made an impression on me,” he said. “Knew some of the people before, so that helps, too. But there's a lot of guys that, I feel like, are taking steps in that leadership role.”

Asked about his own leadership style, “I try to be as vocal as I can and help everybody,” he said. “It’s a great experience so far, and looking forward to keep building.”

After all the discourse about the rift between Miller and Elias Pettersson, GM Patrik Allvin said that setting the culture in the dressing room going forward would be up to the players.

“You're growing the leadership, and it's my job to create an environment where the players feel safe,” he said to the media last Saturday.

Pettersson knows what that means.

“What it looks like, is everybody has a voice,” he said. “Over time in Pittsburgh, I think that's what was built with (Sidney Crosby) and those guys. And for sure, it's something that they’re trying to build here. From what I've seen so far, it's a great group of guys. Everybody has a voice, and everybody voices their opinion on plays and coverage and stuff like that. So it's been a great experience for me so far.”

Just as defenseman Nikita Zadorov quickly became a central figure when the Canucks traded for him midway through last season, Pettersson’s arrival could be just as impactful this year.

So far, he has been an effective and calming influence on the ice. If he can continue to bring that energy to the dressing room, he’ll be worth every penny of his extension for the next six years.

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