{"id":478444,"date":"2026-02-16T11:59:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T11:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/478444\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T11:59:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T11:59:10","slug":"sweden-coach-sam-hallam-praises-canucks-pettersson-for-two-way-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/478444\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweden coach Sam Hallam praises Canucks\u2019 Pettersson for two-way play"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Plays the right way tactically\u2019: Sweden coach Sam Hallam praises Canucks\u2019 Pettersson for two-way play<\/p>\n<p>Elias Pettersson\u2019s most recent performance has caught the attention of Team Sweden\u2019s coaching staff.<\/p>\n<p>Making his Olympic Games debut this month, the <a class=\"text-accent\" href=\"https:\/\/canucksarmy.com\/vancouver-canucks-line-combinations\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Vancouver Canucks<\/a> forward scored his first international goal since the 2019 World Championships on Saturday. Pettersson then added a second marker, <a class=\"text-accent\" href=\"https:\/\/canucksarmy.com\/news\/olympic-mens-hockey-recap-vancouver-canucks-elias-pettersson-scores-twice-sweden-win-lukas-reichel-scores-germany-loss-latvia\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">powering Sweden to a 5-3 win<\/a> over Slovakia to wrap preliminary play.<\/p>\n<p>Entering the tournament, there were questions about what version of Pettersson would show up for his country, with the Swedish centreman failing to find the scoresheet at last year\u2019s 4 Nations Face-Off, and seeing his ice time plummet from top-line minutes to sub-10 by tournament\u2019s end.<\/p>\n<p>Showing off his goal-scoring talents on the global stage, he showed he can still find the back of the net for his country. His efforts earned kind words from his Swedish Head Coach Sam Hallam, who praised Pettersson\u2019s performance, touting his overall strong two-way play when speaking with <a class=\"text-accent\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/sv\/news\/viktiga-mal-for-elias-pettersson-i-os-2026\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Peter Ekholm of NHL.com\/sv:<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI loved his speed from the middle of the ice when he scored his first goal,\u201d Hallam said, translated via Google Translate. \u201cIt was a nice pass from Forsberg, but from the start he played with good presence, he does the right things, tackles, and plays the right way tactically. It means a lot to him to add two goals to that today. All these players need goals like that to get a better feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Pettersson entered the Olympic break on an 11-game goal-scoring drought with the Canucks. Those scoring troubles followed him through the first two games of the Olympics, where he failed to register a point. After Saturday\u2019s two-goal performance, Pettersson shared he was glad to finally get a couple through.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt felt good,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve had a few chances in the previous two games, I\u2019m happy I got two today.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sweden finished preliminary play with two wins and a loss, falling 4-1 to Finland. Heading into the qualifying round of the knockout stage with a win over Slovakia, Pettersson said they\u2019re proud of how they were able to bounce back after the loss to their Nordic rivals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe didn\u2019t like the game against Finland,\u201d he said. \u201cToday we were better with and without the puck. We were reliable for each other. We have to continue to build forward.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Pettersson and Team Sweden have secured the seventh seed and will face Latvia in Tuesday\u2019s qualifying round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018Plays the right way tactically\u2019: Sweden coach Sam Hallam praises Canucks\u2019 Pettersson for two-way play Elias Pettersson\u2019s most&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-478444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}