With The Canucks, J.T. Miller Was A Complicated Hero. Replacing Him Will Be Just As Complex.

Yahoo

24-04-2025

There's no simple way to describe J.T. Miller or his time as a Vancouver Canuck.
When he joined the team ahead of the 2019-20 season, he was a magical fit with Elias Pettersson and Brock Boeser on Vancouver's Lotto Line. In the end, his personality clash with Pettersson led to his trade, and it played a major role in cratering the Canucks' 2024-25 season.
Someday, we might learn more about the triggers that made the rift impossible to repair. And someday, Canucks president Jim Rutherford and GM Patrik Allvin may be able to rebuild the enviable center depth they inherited when they took the reins in Vancouver late in 2021 — Miller, Pettersson and Bo Horvat.
At Vancouver's season-ending debrief on Monday, they said that was their top priority this summer. Rutherford also offered a few nuggets on how the drama went down behind closed doors.
During the season, plenty of outsiders advised how they believed the feud could be resolved.
'They've got to go to dinner and they've got to fight it out,' said Rick Tocchet, acknowledging that he'd heard all the suggestions. 'You don't think we've tried all that stuff? It just didn't work out. And I know everybody's looking for a bad guy. I don't know if there's a there's a bad guy in the thing. It just didn't work out.'
Every workplace includes disparate personalities who can't seem to get on the same page, and this was apparently one of those situations. Miller is brash, intense and not afraid to share his opinions, while Pettersson is quiet, a little sarcastic and at his best when he's running on instinct.
As the whispers of the feud got louder, former Canuck Brad Richardson shared that the bad blood was bubbling when he was in Vancouver, back in the 2021-22 season.
On the Missin Curfew podcast in January, he recalled that he told Miller at the time, 'You're too hard on this kid … when you're on him, he's going to shut down.'
The rift was public enough that Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman asked Pettersson about it during the 2023 all-star weekend in Florida.
'He's a skillful player,' Pettersson said. 'I don't know if 'emotional' is the right word. I mean, he wants to win so bad, and sometimes, he maybe gets… too 'hot-headed'… if that's the right word, but he cares a lot, and he just wants to win.'
Asked to describe their relationship, Pettersson said, 'We've had our differences, maybe in some games, but I mean, he's a teammate that I respect and yeah, he's someone I like to play hockey with. Yeah, there's a lot of speculation, obviously a lot, but he's a teammate that I respect… it's not an issue.'
NHL Rumor Roundup: Canucks' Summer Of Uncertainty Looms A tumultuous, disappointing regular season has ended for the Vancouver Canucks.
This season, the first major sign that something was awry was when Miller took a personal leave of absence in mid-November that lasted for 10 games. It came right after he was benched for the last 14:40 of the third period of Vancouver's 5-3 home-ice loss to the Nashville Predators on Nov. 17.
'He wasn't one of the guys I thought could get us back in the game,' Tocchet said at the time.
It's unclear if Miller's leave was a direct result of that game, but Rutherford clarified this week that it did come at the player's request.
Miller returned to action on Dec. 12, and barely a week passed before Tocchet and captain Quinn Hughes acknowledged the elephant in the room just before Christmas.
Simultaneously, Miller and Pettersson were both denying any problems – and in the moment, they probably meant it. Hockey players are hardwired to put their team above all else, and they may have still believed that they could squash their beef.
But Rutherford acknowledged this week that the issue ultimately stretched beyond just Miller and Pettersson.
'I think a lot of things were personal,' Rutherford said. 'I don't believe that it was just down to two people. It filtered into the whole team, or most of the team, and affected the chemistry of our team.'
Rutherford also said that Miller 'tried hard to fix the situation.'
Eventually, all parties threw in the towel.
'We approached J.T. about, 'Would he consider going to another team?' ' Rutherford said. 'At that point, he said he would.'
On Jan. 28, Rutherford went public to Gary Mason of the Globe and Mail about the issue that had been deemed unsolvable.
At some point, 'J.T. was getting anxious,' Rutherford said Monday. 'He wanted to make it very clear that he did want to be traded, and he would waive his no-trade to go to the New York Rangers. At that point, then everything was moving forward.'
When Miller was dealt on Jan. 31, he had put up nine goals and 35 points in 40 games with the Canucks, on the heels of a 103-point campaign in 2023-24 that had brought fans to their feet with regularity at Rogers Arena, chanting his name. He added 35 points in 32 games with the Rangers, but New York also failed to qualify for the playoffs, and coach Peter Laviolette has now been fired.
What Went Wrong For The 2024-25 Vancouver Canucks: The Pettersson/Miller Rift The 2024-25 season did not go as planned for the Vancouver Canucks. After winning the Pacific Division in 2023-24, Vancouver missed the post-season, finishing the campaign with 90 points. Overall, there were many reasons why the Canucks missed the playoffs, with one of the major issues being the in-season rift between Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller.
Miller's departure did not light a spark under Pettersson – at least, not yet. He had 32 points in 44 games before the trade, then 13 in the next 20 games before suffering an oblique injury that caused him to miss the last 12 games of the season.
For now, the Canucks are hopeful that a full summer of good training and a new mindset will bring Pettersson to training camp in the fall back at his full capacity. Filip Chytil, one of the players who came back from the Rangers in the Miller deal, also missed the last 16 games of the year with a concussion. He was healthy by season's end and also striving for a productive off-season.
For a time, Miller and Pettersson were the Canucks' top dogs. Now, Pettersson will have to prove next season that he deserves to be in that conversation with Hughes.
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