Brendan Gallagher is going to Vancouver in exchange of a star forward in this trade proposal
A fan trade proposal floated this weekend has the Montreal Canadiens landing Elias Pettersson from the Vancouver Canucks in a swap that has lit up hockey Twitter.
The pitch, posted Saturday night, sends Pettersson and his six-year, $11.6M cap hit to Kent Hughes. Vancouver gets prospect Michael Hage and Brendan Gallagher.
The poll attached to the tweet sits at 46.6% Montreal says no, 27.7% Vancouver says no, 25.8% fair deal. The split tells you everything about how this one reads.
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Pettersson finished the season with 15 goals, 36 assists, 51 points and a -30 rating across 74 games. The Canucks went 25-49-8, dead last in the league at 32nd overall.
His last 10 games tell the same story. Six assists, zero goals, a -7 rating. He's still drawing power-play time, still logging top-six minutes, still not scoring.
That contract runs through a long runway. Six years at $11.6M against the cap is a swing only a believer in bounce-back makes.
Why Kent Hughes would never touch this deal in a million years
Montreal just finished 48-24-10 with 106 points, sixth in the NHL. The roster is young, fast, and cheap. Pettersson is none of those things right now.
Gallagher heading the other way at 34 years old, with one year left at $6.5M, is the part of the proposal that does most of the lifting. That's not a real return, it's salary ballast.
The fan vote leaning Montreal makes sense in a vacuum. Pettersson is the biggest name on the table. Star recognition still moves the needle in trade-bait threads.
But the actual math is brutal. Hughes would be inheriting a -30 winger with six years of risk, paying him like a 90-point center, and giving up a top prospect in Hage for the privilege.
The Canadiens beat Vancouver 4-3 on the road back in October. Look at how the two seasons ended and ask which front office needs help right now.
Pettersson's name will keep surfacing in trade chatter as long as Vancouver sits 32nd. The cap sheet attached to him isn't getting any shorter, and the production isn't trending up.
The real question Habs fans should be asking isn't whether Hughes would say yes. It's why this specific name keeps getting tied to Montreal every time the Canucks struggle.
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YESTERDAY
MAY 29, 2026
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| G | A | PTS | ||
| Taylor Hall | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| Logan Stankoven | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| Jackson Blake | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Seth Jarvis | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Cole Caufield | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Shayne Gostisbehere | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Eric Robinson | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Sebastian Aho | - | 1 | 1 | |
| William Carrier | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Nikolaj Ehlers | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Lane Hutson | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Alexander Nikishin | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Andrei Svechnikov | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Frederik Andersen | - | - | - | |
| Josh Anderson | - | - | - | |
| Zachary Bolduc | - | - | - | |
| Alexandre Carrier | - | - | - | |
| Jalen Chatfield | - | - | - | |
| Kirby Dach | - | - | - | |
| Phillip Danault | - | - | - | |
| COMPLETE STATS | ||||