This is the Christmas content Canucks fans have been craving.
Okay, to be honest, most Canucks fans are probably craving hockey more than anything right now, but that’s coming too. In the meantime, it’s magical to see Canucks superfan Michael Bublé team up with Canucks superstar Elias Pettersson to sing Christmas Carols at Canuck Place Children’s Hospice.
Born in Burnaby, Bublé is a longtime Canucks fan and part-owner of the Vancouver Giants. Technically, he’s even a former Canuck. He signed an honorary one-day contract with the Canucks during the 2011-12 season, skating with the team at practice and even taking a penalty shot on Roberto Luongo — he hit the post.
Okay, Bublé isn’t the greatest hockey player — he once bowed out of the Bieksa’s Buddies game during the 2012-13 lockout when he realized his opponents could actually play — but he is a great singer.
Pettersson, on the other hand...well, it’s a good thing he can do pretty much everything else, including juggle while unicycling, because he probably won’t be making a triple-platinum Christmas album any time soon. That actually makes his participation in carolling for the kids even more impressive, stepping well outside of his comfort zone.
Pettersson started with a little Swedish lesson, teaching the kids at Canuck Place how to say “Merry Christmas” in Swedish: “God Jul.” That’s pronounced “Yule” with a soft “J” as in “jogging.”
He then brings up one of the heartbreaking parts of the COVID-19 pandemic: he can’t go inside Canuck Place and spend time with the kids like the Canucks normally do throughout the year. For the families at Canuck Place, this must be a particularly difficult time. Perhaps a visit from Pettersson, Bublé, and Fin can help make the holiday a little brighter.
One nice thing about wearing a mask is that no one can tell when you’re not singing along. To be fair to Pettersson, perhaps he’s not familiar with the Christmas standards in English. To be unfair to Pettersson, both the Jackson 5 and Bublé versions of “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” charted in Sweden.
Normally it’s Pettersson carrying his teammates; this time, it’s the other way around. No offence meant to Pettersson, but I’m pretty sure he already knows.
To Pettersson’s credit, he’s on-key when Bublé puts him on the spot to sign “to town” all on his own. He’s probably a far better singer than he realizes, because it seems like he can literally do anything he wants to. At some point he’ll dissect his singing voice down into 12 parts and practice each of them individually the way he did with his slap shot until he can go from Barry White’s bassy growl to Mariah Carey’s whistle tone.
Despite staying six feet apart, Bublé and Pettersson have a natural chemistry and have some fun with the whole thing. Bublé says, “This next one is all Petey!” and Pettersson deadpans, “This is not what we agreed to,” with perfect comedic timing.
The best moment of the entire video is when Bublé shows his true Canucks fan bona fides, interjecting a zinger into his rendition of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
“All of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names (like Messier!),” shouts out Bublé, who always knows exactly how to bring the house down.
Honestly, Pettersson deserves a ton of credit for putting himself out there for the kids. As he admits at the end of the video, “I just realized, I don’t know any of the songs...I don’t even know the Swedish songs.”
This isn’t the first time Bublé has teamed up with a Canuck. When the crooner hosted the 2018 Juno Awards, he tagged a then-injured Brock Boeser for a magic mirror gag in his intro: when Bublé looked in the mirror, he saw the preternaturally-handsome Boeser running his hands through his Prince Charming-esque hair instead of his own, slightly-less-preternaturally-handsome mug.
Now Bublé just needs to do some comedy improv with Quinn Hughes to complete the young Canucks stars collection.
