Former Vancouver Canucks center J.T. Miller made attempts to solve the locker room tension with center Elias Pettersson, before heading to the New York Rangers, Canucks’ President of Hockey Operations Jim Rutherford said on Monday.
While it was no secret that the Canucks’ two top forwards at the start of the 2024-25 season had struggled to get along, the American center looked to solve the locker room chemistry, in hopes of keeping the Canucks a strong Stanley Cup Playoff contender.
“J.T. tried hard to help fix the situation. A lot of people in our organization worked on it, and we had hoped that it could get back to where it was a year ago, because the same two players played a year ago, both had good years, and the team won the division,” Rutherford told reporters at his end-of-season media availability.
“This was a situation that wasn’t as easy to resolve in a matter of a day or a week, but when we got to the point that everybody in the organization felt that it wasn’t going to be resolved, we had to look at what all the options were.”
Eventually, the Canucks asked Miller which teams he would be willing to go to and orchestrated a trade with the Rangers on Jan. 31, bringing back center Filip Chytil, defenseman Victor Mancini, and a first-round pick in the 2025 NHL Draft, which they then flipped to the Pittsburgh Penguins as part of a deal for blueliner Marcus Pettersson and left winger Drew O’Connor.
