At the end of the regular season, the Vancouver Canucks and Elias Pettersson will be working on a contract extension, and fortunately both camps appear to be on the same wavelength.
Star player and hockey president Jim Rutherford said the same thing Friday, saying negotiations could wait. The organization is having its best moments on the ice in a long time and everyone wants to focus on the present moment.
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Pettersson will become a free agent and is expected to break the bank after agreeing to a three-year deal in 2021 with an average annual value of $7.35 million. With his 59 points in 45 games, the Swede is one of the best scorers in the league and he is enjoying it in Vancouver.
“I think it shows where we are in the standings, all the renovations to the arena and becoming a truly professional hockey club, and the culture has changed,” he told the NHL website. com.
“There’s no one here worried,” Rutherford assured him at a news conference. Things get a lot more serious in the offseason [les négociations] Come this far.”
An important player
The 74-year-old has just signed a contract extension. He's happy that his team's stars are leading the Canucks in other directions, but he also understands that fans are impatiently waiting for the outcome of the Pettersson case.
“My son asked me this morning at 7am because he asks me almost every morning. He wants to know like everyone else. “Look, we can wait,” he repeated, smiling.
“I'll state the obvious, we say it all the time: we really want him to stay. He is a very special player. “He is very important to the Canucks and the city and we cannot let him go at the end of the season and that is our position,” Rutherford said.
Pettersson, like teammates Thatcher Demko, JT Miller, Quinn Hughes and Brock Boeser, will participate in the All-Star Game in February.