Considering the current struggles for the team and Elias Pettersson, it’s hard to believe the contract was inked just 12 months ago. What a difference a year makes
It seems like a much longer time ago, considering all that’s gone on.
The Province headline was “Petey’s staying put.”
Pettersson said then: “I’m so excited to see what the management can do and so far, what they’ve been doing — ever since they came in — first of all, building a culture, a winning culture here for us to succeed, and renovations to the rink … everything was trending in the right direction.”
Agent Pat Brisson said: “In the past four months, there were two things. All along Petey wanted to be a Canuck and two, in talking to Jimmy (Rutherford) and Patrik (Allvin), they really wanted to have an idea of what their cap was going to look like.”
General manager Allvin said the process of re-signing Pettersson began when Allvin joined the front office two years earlier.
“Building the relationship with Elias, showing him the vision and I fully respected him and his agents here for taking their time [to] get to know us,” Allvin said. “It was an exciting time when Elias hinted he wanted to stay here. There was never any doubt that he never wanted to stay here, from my view of it. I think it was more about the trust and vision he wanted to see here.”
There were rumours just ahead of the signing that Vancouver was looking at moving Pettersson to the Carolina Hurricanes in a trade. Signing him a year ago gave Vancouver salary-cap clarity ahead of the last year’s trade deadline.
At the time, team president Rutherford said he didn’t know if the talk of a trade ignited Pettersson’s willingness to sign a new deal.
“Anybody that knows anything about the league would know that teams would be calling about a player with this pedigree,” Rutherford said then.
Pettersson’s struggles have been documented extensively. He’s at 11 goals and 35 points through 54 games. He’s had over 30 goals in each of the previous three seasons.
Pettersson, 26, has a no-movement clause in his contract that kicks in July 1. There has been speculation that the team could decide to trade him before then.
@SteveEwen