NHL agent poll: Could Elias Pettersson consider a short-term contract with Canucks?

Elias Pettersson’s contract situation is the most important domino for the Canucks’ future.

Vancouver’s star centre is entering the final season of a three-year bridge contract he signed in 2021 which carries a $7.35 million cap hit. He’ll expire as a restricted free agent next summer but will be eligible for unrestricted free agency just one year later in 2025. So yes, the Canucks will still control his rights at the end of next season, but Pettersson has the option of taking a one-year deal in arbitration or simply accepting his $8.8 million qualifying offer and walking himself to the open market, which gives him tremendous leverage in upcoming talks.

Pettersson enjoys living in Vancouver and playing in this hockey market as a whole but he’s also anxious to be part of a winning team. The Canucks, of course, have largely wasted some of his and Quinn Hughes’ best seasons since the 2020 bubble, which makes this a fascinating negotiation. Pettersson’s agent, J.P. Barry of Creative Artists Agency, said on “Donnie and Dhali” that he expects to begin discussions with the Canucks again later in the summer.

To analyze the factors surrounding Pettersson’s next contract, The Athletic reached out to three NHL player agents and asked questions about the dynamics underpinning these negotiations.

We granted anonymity to the agents because they otherwise wouldn’t publicly comment on Pettersson’s contract situation. None of our respondents work for CAA or have represented Pettersson or one of their family members in the past.

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Signing a deal this offseason versus the wait-and-see approach

One of the first things Pettersson’s camp has to weigh is whether he should sign an extension this summer or wait and go into this season without a new deal.

If playing on a winner is high on Pettersson’s priority list, it might be wise to see how the team starts the season. The Canucks have a new roster, a relatively new head coach in Rick Tocchet and there’s hope that Thatcher Demko can stay healthy and bounce back.

If Vancouver plays well and is on track to make the playoffs, that could make him a lot more comfortable about the franchise’s direction and committing long-term. And if the Canucks have another disappointing year, then he’s left options open for his future compared to if he signs an extension before the start of the season.

It’s worth remembering David Pastrnak’s situation. Pastrnak, who’s also represented by Barry, waited things out and didn’t sign an extension with Boston until near the end of last season. That’s despite the fact that the two sides had been talking about a new deal since July 2022.

Waiting would offer Pettersson more clarity on the franchise’s future and potentially enhance his earning power. The longer this negotiation drags, the more pressure the Canucks will face to get Pettersson signed. That would tip leverage in the player’s direction, presuming he maintains his superstar form.

“The one thing I’ll always say to a client in this position is, you’ve got to look yourself in the mirror and really ask yourself the hard questions and are you wired to handle it (waiting it out)?” said Agent 1. “If the answer is yes, then obviously financially, the best thing is to try and play it out for at least a period of time because if you’re a great player like he is, you’re going to just continue to enhance your value and you’re going to have so much more knowledge and education about where the organization is going three-five months into the season than you will today.

“But he’s got to … be honest with his agent that ‘Hey, if I do have 10 games and I have one assist and things aren’t going well, am I OK?’ Or is that really going to make me squeeze the heck out of my stick and I’m really going to be uptight about it.

“And if a player says ‘Hey, I’m being honest with you, I’m not going to handle that well’, now as an agent, I want to get that guy extended as quick as I can.”

The benefit of signing the deal this summer would be that he doesn’t have to worry about injuries, performance and it being a distraction or media circus the entire year. If Pettersson had a negative experience in terms of contract-related pressure in 2020-21, when he had a slow start in the final year of his entry-level contract, he may feel less inclined to go through that type of ordeal again.

It also might be hard to turn down the security of a huge guaranteed number like $88 million ($11 million x eight years), for example.

“It’s easy to get caught up in what the other side has to say and there’s a lot of money on the table, it might be difficult to turn it down, when maybe turning it down would be the right decision,” said Agent 2. “Not that I would ever blame somebody for taking the security, it’s a long-term contract and whatever makes them happy. I think the downside for most players (signing a year out) is your upside.”

The other factor that could affect timing is whether Pettersson’s camp wants to wait for Auston Matthews’ extension (he’s a UFA at the end of next season), which would introduce a new comparable. Would it be worth waiting to see what Matthews gets?

“It’s always difficult for the player to know whether we should wait for other players to sign or not because you don’t know what they’re going to sign for,” said Agent 2. “Nobody expects Auston Matthews to give the Leafs any kind of discount, but you never know. “But probably, on balance, there is a greater risk on the Canucks’ side that the new Matthews contract will somewhat pull up the rest of the star players.

“Elite players in hockey — the Auston Matthews, Connor McDavid types that could have demanded 20 percent of the cap, and their teams would have had to pay them, they haven’t done that, they haven’t anything even close to that. That could change.”

The big takeaway is that a wait-and-see approach could be sensible and attractive to Pettersson for multiple reasons. But the agents we spoke to stressed that it really comes down to the player’s personality and how confident they feel in themselves.

Could Pettersson consider a shorter deal?

There are 15 current NHL players who signed a contract with a $10 million or higher cap hit. All but two of them — Matthews and Mitch Marner — committed for the maximum term length-wise. In other words, that’s the norm for contracts like Pettersson’s. You can bet that’s what the Canucks will be gunning for.

The idea of signing shorter contracts has become more attractive to players recently, however, because of how much the salary cap is expected to rise in the short and medium term. Certainly, we saw that in free agency where an unusual number of players signed short-term contracts.

Colleague Jonas Siegel reported that Matthews’ next deal could most likely be in the two to five-year range as well.

“If I’m him (Pettersson), I’m really thinking about short term because I want to see what happens with the salary cap and where it goes … because think about if that thing is $92 (million) or it gets to $94 million in three (to) four years, that’s massive money,” said Agent 3.

The other factor is the age when Pettersson’s next contract would expire. If he signs an eight-year deal that kicks in during 2024-25, he’ll be 32 when he’s hitting the open market. Depending on how well he ages, he might not secure another mega contract at 32. But if Pettersson signs for let’s say four years, it’d allow him to re-enter the market at 28, when the salary cap will likely be significantly higher than where it is today.

“If he gets back to the (negotiating) table still in his 20s, I think that would be an enormous financial gain for a player,” said Agent 1. “But he’s got to have the right wiring because there’s a lot of security to having eight years and being done with it.”

Normally this would be a simple debate for the player to decide whether he prefers trying to maximize his earning potential, which could involve signing a three-to-five-year extension, or the security of an eight-year pact. In Pettersson’s case, there’s the added uncertainty around the Canucks’ ability to build a Stanley Cup contender. If he wants to stay but isn’t sure about the franchise’s direction, it could give him one more reason to consider a shorter deal instead of a full eight years.

It could also give Pettersson the opportunity to match the approximate term left on Hughes’ (four years left) and/or Demko’s (three years) contracts.

What could Pettersson’s next extension cost?

Predicting Pettersson’s contract if he elects to take a wait-and-see approach is very difficult.

We don’t know how much the cap could rise, how the team will perform this season or what Matthews could potentially do to raise the market value of star players. There’s just a lot of uncertainty and moving parts, which is why our pool of agents didn’t feel comfortable making the type of contract prediction they made for Pettersson when he was coming off his ELC ($7.53 million x three years was the average prediction last time which was really close).

But let’s operate under a scenario where Pettersson is willing to extend this offseason and commit for a max eight years. Under these circumstances, you can feel comfortable about a ballpark range. We started by building a cohort of elite players in their mid-20s that signed big extensions within the last 13 months. It’s tougher to use comparable deals older than that (such as Aleksander Barkov or Brayden Point) because those extensions weren’t negotiated at a time when the salary cap was expected to spike. The marketplace is different now.

I built this cohort independently, with the agents we spoke to agreeing that it’d be fair to include elite players at any forward position, not just centres.

“In a negotiation like this, there probably won’t be disagreement on who the comparables are,” said Agent 2. “It’s going to be more where does he slot relative to those comparables? The player could say ‘I should be paid like Pastrnak’ … and the club would say ‘Yeah, we think you’re really good and that’s probably a fair comparable, but you’re not quite there.”

Pettersson doesn’t have the resume that Nathan MacKinnon, who signed for $12.6 million annually for eight seasons, has so that sets a ceiling. Sebastian Aho’s recent $9.75 million AAV extension is the floor. Pettersson’s production both last season and over his career as a whole is superior to Aho so he’ll earn more.

Pastrnak’s a fascinating comparable at $11.25 million annually. He has a longer track record of elite production. Last season was the first time Pettersson has eclipsed the point-per-game mark whereas Pastrnak has been point-per-game or better in five straight seasons. Pastrnak won the Rocket Richard in 2019-20 and was at the tail end of a 61-goal season when he signed this deal. He also has a strong playoff track record.

Pettersson could counterargue by pointing out that his two-way game is significantly better, that Pastrnak played on a much better team with a lot more high-end talent and that he plays the premium position.

“Pettersson is signing in a high tax jurisdiction,” pointed out Agent 2. “Is it wrong to say ‘Well, looking at Pastrnak and MacKinnon as examples, maybe I’m not quite at their level as a player but if I sign I’m taking quite a bit less home after taxes than those guys are.’ All these things will become a part of it.”

If an eight-year extension is negotiated this offseason, Pastrnak’s contract looks like the best comparable. Perhaps that would make Pettersson’s market value in the $11-$11.5 million AAV ballpark range. That would still be strong value for the Canucks long-term given the direction the cap is expected to go.

Ultimately, Pettersson has a lot of leverage and options. No matter what road he chooses — whether it’s signing long-term now, waiting to see how the season plays out, or signing a shorter deal, he’s firmly in the driver’s seat.

(Top photo: Jeff Vinnick / NHLI via Getty Images)