Elias Pettersson trade talk is back, and this time the Vancouver Canucks have three real teams asking.
Rick Dhaliwal reported Monday night that the Kings, Penguins and Hurricanes have all at least explored a deal for the Vancouver center.
Dhaliwal also said the Canucks tried to move Pettersson at the draft and that teams have called since, but the contract is proving tough to shift.
Tough is an understatement. Pettersson carries an $11,600,000 cap hit, tied for eighth-highest in the entire NHL.
That number would be easier to swallow if the production matched it. It hasn't.
Pettersson finished last season with 15 goals and 36 assists for 51 points in 74 games, and he went minus-30 along the way.
His last 10 games of the year were even worse: zero goals, six assists, a minus-7 rating.
The goal differential that says everything about Vancouver
Context matters here, and Vancouver's context is brutal. The Canucks finished 25-49-8, dead last in the NHL at 32nd overall, with a minus-100 goal differential.
That's not a typo. Minus-100 for a full season is the kind of number that gets front offices fired, not just players moved.
Manny Malhotra was hired as head coach on June 1, walking into a rebuild that already has its best-paid forward searching for the exit.
Here's the twist. Every team reportedly sniffing around Pettersson beat Vancouver head-to-head this season.
Carolina finished second overall in the league. Pittsburgh finished tenth. Los Angeles finished twentieth, and even they only lost to the Canucks once, in overtime, in four tries.
So you've got three playoff-caliber franchises kicking tires on a $11.6 million center who is minus-30 on a team that couldn't buy a win.
That's the kind of asymmetry that makes moving a contract like this genuinely hard, and it's why nothing has closed yet.
Would any of these three actually pull the trigger before training camp? Nobody's saying no, but nobody's rushing either.
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The Canucks front office wanted this resolved before now. Instead, they're heading into another season with the awkward question still hanging over the locker room.
Should the Canucks eat money to move Elias Pettersson before camp opens?
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