The Vancouver Canucks’ decision to give Elias Pettersson only a three-year bridge deal in October 2021 looked odd then, and it looks even stranger now.
Back in that offseason, Jim Benning had reached training camp without new contracts for Pettersson and Quinn Hughes, the two young pillars of the franchise. He eventually got both done on Oct. 1, 2021, but the deals came in very different shapes.
Hughes landed a six-year contract at $7.85 million per season. Pettersson got three years at $7.35 million a year.
That shorter term stood out immediately. Around the league, other elite young forwards were locking in long-term money: Brayden Point at eight years and $9.25 million average annual value, Andrei Svechnikov at eight years and $7.75 million AAV, and Kirill Kaprizov at five years and $9 million AAV.
Now there may be a reason the Canucks held back on Pettersson.
In a recent video examining Pettersson’s decline, Canucks reporter Harman Dayal said he heard something from a team executive in November 2021, just one month after the extension was signed.
“This Canucks executive told me that one of the reasons they went shorter on Petey is because they had some reservations about his commitment and personality type,” Dayal said.
“I’ll be honest, at the time, I didn’t take that seriously.”
At the time, there was little reason to. Pettersson was still one of the brightest young players in hockey. He had scored 10 goals in his first 10 career games, won the Calder Trophy, and impressed in the 2020 NHL bubble playoffs.
For nearly the full span of that three-year deal, he looked like a bargain. Pettersson finished 17th in league scoring over those years and put together a 102-point season in 2022-23.
But the picture has changed sharply since then.
Pettersson’s rise has given way to a rough stretch that has turned him into the Canucks’ highest-paid player and, now, one of the NHL’s worst contracts. Injuries have been part of the story, including knee tendonitis in 2024, and Pettersson said he wasn’t fully healthy last year. Even so, the 27-year-old has also been publicly challenged by Canucks coaches and management over his practice habits and preparation.
Patrik Allvin and Jim Rutherford still believed enough in Pettersson to sign him to an eight-year deal in 2024. But the executive Dayal spoke with in 2021 may have seen warning signs the old regime either noticed early or chose to ignore.
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