Vancouver Canucks forwards J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson ranked No. 17 and 23 on Paul Pidutti’s list of the top 50 active NHL forwards published to Daily Faceoff on Wednesday.
Miller, 31, set new career highs with 37 goals and 103 points in 81 games with the Canucks during the 2023-24 season, moving up 15 spots in Pidutti’s rankings in the process. Miller tacked on three goals and 12 points in 13 playoff contests with the Canucks this past spring.
Coming off a 2023-24 campaign in which he amassed 34 goals and 89 points in 82 games with the Canucks, Pettersson’s standing in Pidutti’s “High Noon” rankings only decreased by one spot. The 25-year-old centre ranked a career-best No. 22 in Pidutti’s rankings one year ago.
Pidutti, who goes by the handle @AdjustedHockey on social media, uses his yearly rankings as part of his model to determine which players are worthy of induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame. If Pidutti’s model deems a player to be as good or better than his most decorated contemporaries at any point in his career, it only strengthens their Hall of Fame case.
Miller and Pettersson are two of the NHL’s most talented forwards. However, according to Pidutti’s model, which weighs a number of offensive and defensive factors, Pettersson has yet to cement himself as a top 20 forward relative to his peers at any point in his career.
As one might expect, Edmonton’s Connor McDavid and Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon finished a distant first and second of Pidutti’s forward rankings, with Toronto’s Auston Matthews, Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov, and Boston’s David Pastrnak rounding out the top five.
Here’s a brief excerpt from Pidutti’s article describing how his High Noon player assessment tool works:
In short, it uses a weighted three-year average: 2023-24 represents 50% of a player’s score; 2022-23 gets one-third (33%); 2021-22 gets one-sixth (17%). The split helps take a longer-range view of performance — a brilliant few months on a stacked power play doesn’t make a player one of the game’s best. So, eligibility begins after three seasons (i.e., Connor Bedard will debut in 2026).
In the margins of his article, Pidutti noted that Canucks winger Brock Boeser improved to No. 70 in his 2024 rankings after finishing outside the top 100 one year ago. Furthermore, former Canucks forward Elias Lindholm dropped 64 spots — from No. 38 to 102 — after managing just 44 points in the 2023-24 season.
The Canucks originally selected Pettersson in the first round (No. 5 overall) of the 2017 NHL Draft. Through 407 career games over six seasons in Vancouver, the Sundsvall, Sweden product has collected 170 goals and 412 points; he’s added eight goals and 24 points in 30 playoff contests.
Miller joined the Canucks in the 2019 offseason through a trade with the Tampa Bay Lightning which saw the East Palestine, Ohio product sent to Vancouver in exchange for goaltender Marek Mazanec, a 2019 third-round pick, and the Canucks’ own 2020 first-round pick.
