Elias Pettersson is going to owe the Sedin brothers some money after stealing their signature play Friday against the Colorado Avalanche.
“He’s going to have to pay us absolutely. We have the copyright on that play and you can’t just steal like that, that’s wrong,” Henrik Sedin said with a laugh Saturday on Sportsnet 650 in Vancouver.
Pettersson, a native of Sweden like the Sedins, got Canucks fans on their feet when he fired a pass intentionally down the ice so it could bounce off the end boards and set Brock Boeser up for a goal against the Avalanche.
“It was fun to see it again,” Sedin said when asked about the play by Joey Kenward. “The boards, they looked good. It was tough for us to make it at Rogers Arena because the boards weren’t as good as we wanted them to be. But they changed the boards and it seems like the puck is bouncing good again.”
The assist was one of five points on the night for Pettersson, who now leads the Canucks and all NHL rookies in scoring with 15 points.
“He’s really impressive,” Sedin said. “He plays the game in a way that you can’t really compare him to the other players on the team because he can do it all.”
Sedin wasn’t surprised by Pettersson hitting his stride right away in the NHL, although he will admit even he didn’t see the rookie producing so much so fast. But Sedin reminded Kenward that Pettersson played in the top pro league in Sweden last year, where he led the league with 56 points in 44 games and was named playoff MVP.
“That’s a really tough league to perform in and he did it on a nightly basis,” Sedin said. “I think it really helped him playing there.”
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