VANCOUVER – Vancouver Canucks president Jim Rutherford stated at the end of last season that he wanted to upgrade the team’s depth at centre.
Facing one of the hottest teams in the NHL in the Minnesota Wild on Saturday night, Vancouver deployed David Kampf, Aatu Raty, Max Sasson and Drew O’Connor down the middle.
Top centre Elias Pettersson left warmup and was scratched with an upper-body injury from what would have been his 500th career NHL game.
Kampf played just his ninth game in a Vancouver uniform, and on the team’s top line with Brock Boeser and Conor Garland, three weeks after the Toronto Maple Leafs terminated Kampf’s contract.
Raty and Sasson were both part of the Abbotsford Canucks’ run to the AHL’s Calder Cup last spring. O’Connor plays primarily as a winger.
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Skating on a line with Evander Kane and Kiefer Sherwood, Raty’s two goals and an assist in a 4-2 win over the Wild was the first three-point game of his career.
“He had more of an opportunity, but I think even if he’d had less opportunity, he really stepped up,” said Canucks coach Adam Foote. “He played more in-your-face.”
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While the Canucks try to reverse a recent slide down the standings, Foote has preached a grittier style of play. It paid dividends against the Wild.
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“That was probably the most we’ve had scrums after a whistle,” Foote said.
“When we’re up in a game, 2-0 or 3-0, we will have less scrums. We don’t want to go 4-on-4, especially against a potent team. But we were OK with that tonight. We want to go to the next level, and that is understanding that it doesn’t hurt as much. It’s OK to get gritty and go hard in those areas.”
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Even without Pettersson, the Canucks held their own in the face-off circle. Raty, who’s the strongest on the team on the dot, went 14-for-16 and Kampf was also strong at 15-for-20.
Raty was close to collecting his first career hat trick. A tic-tac-toe goal that beat Minnesota’s Jesper Wallstedt off Raty’s skate was disallowed after the referees deemed he’d kicked it in.
“I feel like they’ve been pretty lenient with the goals that they’ve allowed, so I was pretty surprised that that was disallowed,” Raty said.
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Vancouver’s other goals came from two young Swedish defenders. Tom Willander, a 20-year-old rookie playing in his 19th NHL game, scored Vancouver’s first goal and the first of his career.
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“(Linus) Karlsson did a good job, kind of slowing it down and I stopped up for a second,” he recalled. “I found a passing lane and I just tried to get off as quickly as possible.”
Less than three minutes after Willander scored, Vancouver’s 21-year-old defenceman Elias “Junior” Pettersson earned his second goal of his career.
“It’s fun that he gets his goal right after,” Willander said. “I couldn’t believe it. It’s good that we finally get some pucks in, and that we get a win.”
After goalie Kevin Lankinen appeared in 11 of Vancouver’s last 13 games, 25-year-old rookie Nikita Tolopilo made his first appearance of the year at Rogers Arena.
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He gave up a goal to Matt Boldy on the first shot of the game, but recovered with several sharp stops to keep his team in the game in the first period — including a breakaway stop on Kirill Kaprizov.
“He was calm, it seems,” Foote said. “I think it gave the guys some confidence.”
The status of centre Elias Pettersson was uncertain.
“We did a little further medical,” Foote said. “We’ll look at some more things tomorrow — get an MRI.”
The Canucks host the Detroit Red Wings on Monday
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 6, 2025.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
