Elias Pettersson's name is back in the trade rumor mill, and the Vancouver Canucks can't make it stop.
Elliotte Friedman brought it up again last night, and Pittsburgh keeps coming up in the same breath.
Friedman didn't dance around it. He said flat out that a change of scenery might be exactly what Pettersson needs right now.
The timing matters here. When the league's pay scale jumps overnight, a big-money deal stops looking like a bad mortgage.
Elliotte Friedman: Re Elias Pettersson future/Canucks: Does what happened with the salaries [rising] change the conversation for him; we talked about Pittsburgh; I think we all feel he needs a change of scenery.
It starts looking more like rent in a city where prices keep climbing anyway.
Leo Carlsson tops the league at $18,000,000 a year in Anaheim, with Kiril Kaprizov right behind at $17,000,000 in Minnesota.
Pettersson's minus-30 season muddies the trade math
Pettersson checks in eighth overall at $11,600,000, one spot ahead of Erik Karlsson's $11,500,000 in Pittsburgh.
Does that make his deal a bargain now? Not exactly, but it's not the runaway contract people were describing a year ago.
On the ice, this wasn't a vintage year for Pettersson. He finished with 51 points in 74 games and a minus-30 rating.
He still delivered on the power play, adding 4 goals and 18 assists with the man advantage.
His finish held up too. Pettersson put up 6 points over his final 10 games, then 3 more in his last 5.
Vancouver, meanwhile, finished 25-49-8 for 58 points, ranking 32nd overall in a season that bled 316 goals against.
Manny Malhotra takes over as head coach after being hired in June, walking straight into that mess.
Trading Pettersson now, one summer removed from a lost season and before Malhotra has even run a camp, would be selling low.
He was still Vancouver's leading scorer despite everything. That's a bad move, whatever Pittsburgh puts on the table.
Pittsburgh isn't hiding from big swings either. Kyle Dubas has run the Penguins' front office since August 2023, and Pittsburgh finished tenth in the league with 98 points.
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Nothing here says a trade happens this week, or even this summer. But Friedman doesn't drop Pittsburgh's name for no reason, and neither does a contract that just got a lot easier to move.
Should the Canucks trade Elias Pettersson to Pittsburgh this summer?
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