Canucks: Two Elias Petterssons on the ice? 'Not a 'big deal' for play-by-play broadcasters

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The Vancouver Canucks currently have a defenceman Elias Pettersson to go with a centre Elias Pettersson, but the team’s play-by-play broadcasters are not the least bit rattled.

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The Canucks’ roster page shows that they had called up defender Pettersson, 20, from their AHL Abbotsford affiliate. Forward Pettersson, 26, has been a key contributor to the big club for some time.

Coach Rick Tocchet told the media Sunday afternoon that the call-up was precautionary. The team has just six healthy blue liners currently.

Making things easier for Sportsnet TV’s John Shorthouse and his Sportsnet 650 radio counterpart Brendan Batchelor is that the Petterssons pronounce their first names differently.

The centre is uh-LEE-uss. The defenceman is uh-LYE-uss.

“It’s not that big a deal. The names are different. And I had nearly two decades of ‘Daniel,’ and ‘Henrik,’” Shorthouse explained, pointing to calling games with the Sedin twins.

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The Canucks took defenceman Pettersson with a third-round pick in the 2022 NHL Draft. Batchelor first questions to him at the rookie camp that follow centred around how he pronounced his first name.

“He said ‘uh-LYE-uss,’ and I said ‘OK, are you sure?’ He said he was and I thanked him, walked away and did a massive fist pump because if they were two guys who pronounced their names exactly the same way we would have had a problem,” Batchelor said.

Canuck fans might recall when the team made a March 7, 1989 trade with the Edmonton Oilers to add forward Greg (Charles) Adams, a 28-year-old Fuller Lake, B.C. product. The team already had forward Greg Adams, a 25-year-old Nelson native with the nickname Gus.

The first Adams was injured when the second Adams arrived. But it didn’t mean it wasn’t complicated.

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“I called him Gus a few times on the bench and nobody moved,” Bob McCammon, the Canucks coach, told reporters of the second Adams then. “I ended up talking to myself. I think that when Gus gets healthy, I’ll put the two on the same line to see if (play-by-play man) Jim Robson is any good.”

The second player was known as Greg C. Adams during his time with the Canucks. That lasted just 12 games, as he was claimed off waivers before the next season.

The Vancouver Giants went through their own name trouble in 2022-23 when they added Tyler Thorpe, a 17-year-old winger from Richmond, to a team that already featured Ty Thorpe, a 20-year-old centre from Brandon. Then Giants play-by-play man Eddie Gregory tried to call the players by their full names to avoid confusion. Players and team staff tried to call the centre “Thorpie” and the winger “Thorpe Jr.” to differentiate between them in day-to-day dealings.

Batchelor called games with the Giants and then BCHL’s Surrey Eagles before landing his current gig. During his 2012-13 season with the Eagles, triplets Leo, Gerry and Myles Fitzgerald were playing together on a forward line with the Victoria Grizzlies.

“Calling those games kept me up at night way more than this will,” Batchelor said of the Pettersson situation.

@SteveEwen

SEwen@postmedia.com

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