from Iain MacIntyre of Sportsnet,

In the vortex of “noise” swirling like a cyclone around Elias Pettersson these days, the most important sound is what his coach thinks of him. And Rick Tocchet says the Vancouver Canucks star can play better.

“Petey... is maybe just OK,” Tocchet told reporters after Wednesday’s practice. “We have 22 games or whatever left to get his game going.”

While the Canucks’ other alpha forward, J.T. Miller, has been driving the team through its struggles the last couple of weeks, Pettersson has been quiet.

The 25-year-old centre has just one goal and two assists in his last six games, and the Canucks have gone 1-4-1. Excluding a three-point game against Detroit two weeks ago, when Vancouver last won in regulation, Pettersson has only four points in his last nine games.

Pettersson remains 10th in National Hockey League scoring with 29 goals and 75 points in 61 games, and most of his recent decline in scoring can be attributed to a downturn in his on-ice shooting percentage at five-on-five and his failure to collect points at five-on-four during the Vancouver power play’s 3-for-31 slump.

But Pettersson’s sudden drop in production coincides with an eruption of conjecture and debate about his future with the Canucks that was topped by DailyFaceoff insider Frank Seravalli’s tweet Wednesday evening reporting that “significant progress” has been made in contract talks between the Canucks and Pettersson’s agents and that an eight-year contract extension “could be finalized in the coming days.”

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