How Marcus Pettersson’s NHL Career Has Evolved Since Joining The Canucks

“It’s not easy being in this league,” Vancouver Canucks defenceman Marcus Pettersson told The Hockey News ahead of his team’s final home game of the 2025–26 season. 

This quote can be taken a couple of ways. For one, you can look at it as a reflection on how gruelling a season this has been for a beaten and battered Canucks team that is just trying to round out the year on positives. The other could be an observation of what it takes to make this league in the first place and how much work it takes to stick in it. 

Both streams of thought are relevant to the case being made by Pettersson. While the answer was provided in regard to the defenceman playing in his 600th career NHL game against the Los Angeles Kings the week prior, both points still stand when it comes to how Pettersson’s career has progressed since he made his NHL debut on February 15, 2018 as a member of the Anaheim Ducks. 

“It’s such a good league, so to be able to sustain that over time and kind of adapt to where the league has gone, and how the games change and stuff like that, was a proud moment, and hopefully I’ve got a few more,” he added regarding his milestone.  

What may come as a surprise to many is the fact that Pettersson, despite being the oldest defenceman in Vancouver’s lineup right now, is still only 29 years old. A little over a year ago, while still a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins, he was the second-youngest defenceman on his team’s roster — only Pierre-Olivier Joseph was younger. Just like that, Pettersson’s role completely flip-flopped. 

Pettersson was plenty candid when he explained that, as fun as it’s been having so many young and up-and-coming players in the lineup, it’s still been a learning process for both the young guys and the veterans. To put it simply, regardless of the amount of experience the players have in this league, everyone is still learning as the team goes through the bumps along the road.  

“Nobody can prepare you for a season like it’s been for us. Nobody wants to go through that. Nobody has gone through that over here. We’re learning as we go. We’re trying our hardest,” he explained. “I went from overnight, kind of being one of the youngest guys on Pittsburgh, to coming here and being one of the oldest kind of right away. So it’s been an adjustment for me, and I’m learning as I go. I think the whole year, young guys can learn, we older guys can learn. And if we learn everything there is to learn about this year, I think we’re in a good spot moving forward.”

Part of what makes many players in the locker room so optimistic about the Canucks’ future is the crop of young defencemen that literally surround Pettersson and fellow veteran Filip Hronek in the locker room. While Pettersson noted that their confidence and spunk occasionally results in a few chirps sent from stall to stall, there’s an enthusiasm to the way they’ve approached the season that has helped lift up others in the room.  

“They’re so enthusiastic and want to learn, want to be sponges out there and play as much as they can,” he said. “It’s been a learning curve. It’s been a tough one, when you lose that many games, to be in a great mindset and a good mood all the time, and trying to help these guys, but I think we’ve been doing a good job.” 

One guy who has been instrumental in helping even out the tempo of Vancouver’s locker room is Hronek. From eating up heavy minutes on the ice to expanding his role with the team off of it, the defenceman has been a noticeable leader for the Canucks through the past few months. 

“The leadership he’s shown, he’s eating up almost 29, 28 minutes every night and tough minutes. So he’s been great. He’s holding everybody in here accountable, and coming in to work every day. It doesn’t matter if we’re in a slump or if we’re doing good. You bring the same mindset. And he’s been great at teaching these young guys that we don’t get too low, we don’t get too high […] It’s kind of easy to get too low where it’s tough sledding, right? But if things are going well, it’s easy to exhale and drop your shoulders a little bit, but just to keep everybody in that mindset where it doesn’t matter what happens, we’re coming into work the next day and getting better. That’s all you can control. So he’s been great at keeping everybody in that mindset.” 

It’s because of this dynamic between Vancouver’s enthusiastic youth and the even-keel veterans that Pettersson thinks the team can be — and has been — better than how they’ve presented themselves this season. Wherever their rebuild takes them from here, however long it may last, Pettersson believes that it won’t be as doom-and-gloom as many are expecting it to be. 

“We’re rebuilding. Everybody expects and thinks, it’ll be tough, but it doesn’t have to be. We can still win games. We’ve got great players. We’ve gone on runs — the December New York trip was a really good one for us — where we can actually see, ‘okay, we can string a few together and get off to a good start.’ Anything can happen.”  

It’s a pretty standard answer to keeping things light and maintaining belief in the room as the seasons of rebuilding progress. But it’s not a simple fix. 

“All the outside noise, we’ve got to keep that outside noise. It’s a tough market to do that, but we’ve got to be able to say, ‘Hey, okay, we’re in the position we’re in, you come to work every day and control what we can control.’ The rest will take care of itself. If we’re not good enough, we’re not good enough. But if you show up every day to work and work hard enough, you put yourself in the best position to be able to accomplish something.” 

So, to circle back to Pettersson’s earlier comment about being in this league; no, it’s not easy being in the NHL, both from a team and individual player perspective. Team-wise, it’s tough — and will continue to be tough — for a Canucks squad that looks to be entering the throes of a rebuild. Individually, keeping spirits up when you’re playing for a team that has massively underperformed makes things even harder. At the end of the day, the experience is what you make of it, says Pettersson. There’s a lot for everyone in Vancouver’s locker room to learn, including the ‘veterans,’ and that’s something that will propel the next stage of Pettersson’s NHL career as the Canucks embrace their current position.   

“I think we’re going to enjoy being in a position where people are going to overlook us. We know that’s going to happen, so kind of embrace that role. I think we can accomplish some things.” 

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