Hot off the presses: it's official.
Sounds like the plan will be for top prospect Elias Pettersson to come over to North America in the fall.
"This is an important offseason of training and development for Elias and we expect him to be ready to challenge for a roster spot in training camp," said Jim Benning in the team's press release.
Pettersson will be conducting a conference call with local media at 9:30 on Friday morning.
Also in local media—have we ever heard from the Sedins like this during the offseason before?
Even if they're not playing, I expect Daniel and Henrik will be around the team quite a bit for the foreseeable future.
Now—onto the gossip that consumed Canucks' Twitter on Wednesday.
I heard the buzz last week about the NHL first-rounder who's in danger of derailing his pro hockey career because of his addiction to videogames. And I saw Olli Juolevi's name almost immediately connected to the situation.
On the "31 Thoughts" podcast, Jeff Marek declined to name the player in question but mentioned that the story was not new—it was between six months and a year old—and that the player in question was the property of a 'high-profile' team. Coming from a Canadian broadcaster, those high-profile teams would almost certainly include teams in Canadian markets. And if you look at the lists of first-round picks from 2016 and 2015, there aren't *that* many players who have yet to suit up for an NHL game. Drafted fifth overall in 2016, Juolevi is the highest-ranked player from those two seasons who still has a blank NHL stat line next to his name.
I was in Denmark when the story first broke, so I asked around a bit among the Finnish journalists at the World Championship. I was told, without hesitation, that he wasn't the player in question. I was also reminded that a couple of the most public hard-core gamers in the NHL right now are two very successful Finns—Patrik Laine and Aleksander Barkov.
In her profile of Laine that ran in early May,
Emily Kaplan of ESPN describes Laine as an almost monkish creature of habit. He doesn't drink and he barely leaves his hotel when the Jets are on the road. He spends almost all his downtime playing Fortnite—and finished second in the NHL last season with 44 goals, at 19 years old.
Considering all the potential distractions that can tempt NHL players away from the rink, there are plenty of vices, in addition to videogames, that could derail a young player's career. And there is a bright side: as a passive activity, games provide a good opportunity for players to rest their bodies after hard workouts, practices or games.
But like everything, moderation and balance are key—and this isn't a new phenomenon. I knew people who were staying up all night playing games like Warcraft more than 20 years ago. More recently, Call of Duty got the lion's share of the attention, and Kobe Bryant was a high-profile, hardcore fan. As leagues including the NHL are working to find ways to make money off the videogame phenomenon by creating Esports tournaments played live in front of thousands of people, gaming is coming out from the underground and into the public eye.
The buzz around Marek's story reached a fever pitch on Thursday when Toronto-based freelancer Dhiren Mahiban, who's originally from Vancouver, posted a since-deleted tweet saying that his sources that told him that Juolevi was the addicted gamer. Marek quickly quashed the rumour, and Mahiban issued an apology:
As you were, everybody.
Truthfully—even without the videogame issues, my Finnish sources aren't sold on Juolevi's prospects as a high-end NHLer, though they agreed that his play improved over the course of the season with Turku.
My first-hand experience with Juolevi came at Young Stars in Penticton last fall. He's a soft-spoken kid who came across as pretty laid back. So did Patrik Laine, when I first interviewed him at the 2016 World Championship. But Laine counterbalanced his surfer-dude demeanour by sprinkling in assertions that he was better than Auston Matthews and thought he deserved to be picked first overall.
Juolevi's a late birthday. He just turned 20 less than three weeks ago. There's still lots of time for him to find his fire—and to develop into a solid NHL defenseman.
If you're looking for an example of a Canucks player who is transforming as he gets older, look no further than Bo Horvat. I hope he's not putting *too much* pressure on himself, because he sounds determined to take the reins as the next captain in post-Sedin era.
Up till now, Horvat has shown great results from his commitment to improving his game. And he's not done.
He moved well on the big ice in Denmark, creating chances and making plays, as well as taking Canucks goaltending prospect Michael DiPietro under his wing. He might be just the guy to help inspire Juolevi at training camp next fall.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»