Vancouver Canucks Activate Marco Rossi

The Vancouver Canucks announced this morning that center Marco Rossi has been activated off of injured reserve. In a corresponding move, the club placed center Elias Pettersson on IR, retroactive to Dec. 5.

Rossi has not played since Nov. 11, when his former team, the Minnesota Wild, took on the San Jose Sharks. The Austrian center, who turned 24 in September, was a major piece of the return package the Canucks received as part of Friday’s stunning Quinn Hughes trade.

He had scored 13 points in 17 games before suffering a lower-body injury against the Sharks. Rossi participated in Canucks practice yesterday in Newark, and now appears poised to dress for the team’s matinee contest today against the New Jersey Devils.

It seems Rossi will begin his time as a Canuck playing a major role in head coach Adam Foote’s lineup. The Athletic’s Thomas Drance indicated yesterday that Rossi will begin his tenure as the Canucks’ first-line center, skating in between veteran wingers Jake DeBrusk and Brock Boeser. That’s not a role he is entirely unfamiliar with, as he was tested in a similar role at times during his tenure with the Wild.

For much of their existence as a franchise, the Wild have struggled to source top-six offensive centers, pivots capable of scoring at a high rate. While that specific type of player is notoriously difficult for NHL teams to acquire, Rossi has joined a team with one such player already on the roster.

Pettersson, who scored 102 points in 2022-23, has been the key center in Vancouver since winning the Calder trophy in 2018-19. Pettersson has been out since Dec. 5 with an upper-body injury, and has missed three games so far.

When everyone is healthy and playing at their best, the addition of Rossi gives the Canucks an enviable level of depth down the middle. With Pettersson as the first-line center, Rossi anchoring the second line, and Filip Chytil running the third line, the Canucks have a trio of first-round picks at center to form the backbone of its forward corps.

But unfortunately for the Canucks, injuries and inconsistency have clouded that picture considerably. Pettersson hasn’t looked like the Pettersson that scored 102 points and emerged as one of the game’s dominant young centers for more than a year now. Chytil, despite his evident talent, has struggled with persistent injury issues and is once again sidelined with an upper-body injury.

That leaves Rossi, at the moment, the only pivot of that trio healthy and set to play for the Canucks. As the club continues to push forward in its rebuilding process, the health and performance of its three key young centers (as well as the continued growth of 23-year-old Aatu Raty) will be a key story line to track in Vancouver.