New Vancouver Canucks forward Liam Öhgren joins the team with more than just his former Minnesota Wild teammates as familiar faces in the organization. After playing on the same teams in a couple of different leagues, Öhgren will once again be reunited with forward Jonathan Lekkerimäki and defenceman Elias Pettersson as members of the Canucks organization.
Lekkerimäki, Öhgren, and Pettersson were all drafted in 2022, going 15th, 19th, and 80th overall respectively. By this point in their careers, they had already spent three years on the same teams as one-another, with both forwards joining the junior clubs at Djurgårdens IF back in 2019–20. The two also played on Sweden’s U18 and U20 teams together at these respective World Junior Championships, with Öhgren serving as Sweden’s captain at the U18 tournament. Both players enjoyed highly successful campaigns during this particular tournament — not only did Sweden take home gold, but individually, Öhgren put up three goals and six assists in six games played and Lekkerimäki scored five goals and 10 assists in the same span of time.
“We played together in juniors in Sweden too, and like on the national team, all the way up from U16 up to our last World Juniors,” Öhgren told the media on Saturday about his former Sweden and current Canuck teammate. “It’ll be nice to play with him.”
The two players’ history together continued into the season after that, 2022–23, with both playing in their final seasons together at Djurgårdens in HockeyAllsvenskan. Öhgren and Lekkerimäki were also selected to take part in the U20 World Junior Championship, during which the former was named an assistant captain. This year, Pettersson, who was not part of the first World Junior team that Lekkerimäki and Öhgren were on, joined the duo. Throughout this seven-game fourth-place finish for Sweden, Öhgren scored two goals, Lekkerimäki tallied a goal and three assists, and Pettersson put up three assists.
During the 2023–24 season, the three players joined different teams, with Öhgren heading to Färjestad BK and Lekkerimäki and Pettersson playing for Örebro HK. These three briefly reunited again at the 2024 U20 World Junior Championship, with Öhgren being named captain of the club. This particular tournament was a big one for Lekkerimäki, who scored eight goals and seven assists in seven games to earn the title of Most Valuable Player during Sweden’s silver medal heartbreaker. This was the last time all three players joined forces on the ice, though Öhgren and Pettersson both played for the Canucks on Sunday against the New Jersey Devils.
Lekkerimäki and Pettersson are not the only members of the Canucks that Öhgren has prior connections to. Aside from the players traded alongside him in Marco Rossi and Zeev Buium, Öhgren also spent a little time playing with Abbotsford Canucks forward Jujhar Khaira in 2023–24.
During Öhgren’s time with the Wild organization, he also played under now-Canucks assistant coach Brett McLean, who’d previously been Head Coach of the AHL’s Iowa Wild for two seasons. In his first season under McLean in Iowa, Öhgren finished tied for second in scoring on his team with 19 goals and 18 assists — only Travis Boyd, who also played for the Canucks back in 2021, finished with more points than Öhgren.
The move from Minnesota to Vancouver will be an interesting one for Öhgren, but rest assured, with a cast of familiar faces around him from Minnesota and beyond, the forward will have lots of support on and off the ice.
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