Boudreau sees big season for Pettersson with Canucks: ‘Sky is the limit’

PENTICTON, BC — The question that’s been burning ever since Bruce Boudreau replaced Travis Green as Vancouver Canucks head coach more than nine months ago was finally answered on Friday, six days before training camp began.

Yes, Boudreau also has an ice skating drill to test players’ endurance and fitness. But it’s not the timed intervals of Green’s infamous “40s,” and it won’t be on camp’s opening day. So the egg crew at Whistler might not need the puke scratches they needed at previous camps because of the, um, aftermath of Green’s infamous drill.

It took the Abbotsford egg crew several passes to remove the stain from Conor Garland’s breakfast last year.

“I always have a skate test, but that won’t be the first week,” Boudreau said in an interview with Sportsnet Friday ahead of the Canucks’ Young Stars tournament here. “Every coach, and I mean every coach, wants to be known as, ‘My training camp is the toughest.’ That was always so. I mean, from Roger Nielson and his five mile run, Tortorella was Tortorella, my skating test, nobody wants to be soft. But I want to run a camp where everyone knows how we’re going to play for the first week. And then we just build on that.”

So much has happened in the Canucks this past season and into the summer that followed, it’s easy to forget that this will be Boudreau’s first training camp with the team.

Aside from an apparent upgrade in attack that has signed Russian free agents Ilya Mikheyev and Andrei Kuzmenko to play in the top-9 and Curtis Lazar is centered on the fourth row, Boudreau’s team is opposite the team that won the playoffs missed by six points, largely unchanged last spring.

Of course, it’s also largely unchanged from the team that went 32-15-10 under Boudreau — a .649 win rate, which comfortably equates to an 82-game playoff clip — and had the NHL’s second-best power play and third-best goals against.

“We’re going to let our systems down and know exactly how we’re playing,” Boudreau said. “Honestly, I’ve always been successful in the regular season doing the same things. I don’t see why I should switch. We’ve tweaked a few things with new trainers and everything, and they have new ideas. But for the most part we want to play the same way, which is an intrusive, difficult-to-play side and be exciting offensively.”

Boudreau said he believes the team is better because of the speed and the skills that have been added on the wings, and gave some pointers as to how the players could be used.

• Likes the idea of ​​using JT Miller, Bo Horvat and Elias Pettersson in the middle instead of using Pettersson on the wing because there are now enough talented wingers to build a top-9 that can score.

• Boudreau confirmed elite defender Quinn Hughes will switch from left touchline to right touchline at least for the training camp, possibly a new top-flight pairing alongside Oliver Ekman-Larsson.

• He would like to better manage the workload of star goalie Thatcher Demko, who played 64 games last season before collapsing in April, but that will depend on how well backup goalie Spencer Martin plays.

“I think Petey can play with anyone,” Boudreau said of Pettersson, who moved between lines and positions last season, scoring 28 goals and 56 points under the new coach. “I think he proved he can play any kind of game. I watched all those games again this summer, and. . . he is a physical player. You know he hits When he was killing penalties he was good at it. The obnoxious stuff will take care of itself. I still think the sky’s the limit when he’s sane.

Boudreau said if he plays Pettersson in the middle, even if it’s theoretically on the third line, either Pettersson, Horvat or Miller will get an advantageous matchup.

“I think it’s easy to say that no one is really classified as a third line player because most of them will be playing on the power play,” he said. “Our third line last year was Tyler Motte, Juho Lammikko and Matthew Highmore. They would take penalties, but their role (at even strength) was to make sure the other team didn’t score. And they did a great job. But I think this year’s so-called third row will be asked to score.

“There are a lot of rolling parts here. Believe me when I say I thought about it 5,000 times this summer.”

Boudreau, who was denied an extension by new general manager Patrik Allvin and president Jim Rutherford, will coach the final season of the two-year deal he signed with Canucks owner Francesco Aquilini in December.

After sharp comments from Rutherford late in the year about the “structure” of Boudreau’s Canucks and how poorly the team got out of its defensive zone, the coach is left with only the same set of defenders to work with. Allvin brought in Mikheyev from the Toronto Maple Leafs and Kuzmenko from the Kontinental Hockey League, but fell short on his stated mission to improve defense over the summer.

“You know what, I think they’re really underrated,” Boudreau said of his Blue Line group. “I’ve been working on it a lot in my head and on video and we’re going to be better (on zone exits). Yes, we want great exits. everyone does. At the same time I would rather defend well. I think in the last 57 games we were the third best defensive team. We may have messed things up a bit, but we protected ourselves from mistakes and we had a good goalkeeping performance. And I won’t apologize for good goalkeepers.”

The Canucks have sunk themselves over the past two seasons, starting 2020-21 8-14-2 and last year 6-14-2, which is why Boudreau is keen to restore the success and positivity the team has has enjoyed in the last 57 games.

Vancouver kicks off this season with a five-game road trip, beginning Oct. 12 in Edmonton.

Boudreau’s next win will be his 600th^th in the NHL.

“I don’t know if there is anyone who can read the future,” said the 67-year-old. “But I think. . . Game 1 awareness and the importance of Game 1 could mean a lot more this year than it did last year. It makes life a lot easier when you can be ahead of the curve instead of having to catch up.

“I think we’ve improved. Who knows how much?”