One Vancouver player is suddenly emerging as Larkin's successor

The noise around Elias Pettersson and a potential exit from Vancouver has grown loud enough that Steve Yzerman's name is now attached to it, and the numbers on both sides of this thing make it worth taking seriously.

Pettersson finished this season with 15 goals, 36 assists, and 51 points in 74 games for a Canucks team that went 25-49-8 and finished dead last in the NHL.

That's not a contract-year stat line on a rebuilding team. That's a problem.

His $11.6 million cap hit ranks eighth in the entire league. The Canucks surrendered 316 goals this season, a number so ugly it's hard to pin on one player. But the franchise center who carries that number should at minimum be pointing upward.

Over his last 10 games, he was held scoreless on the power play and finished with six points total, a -7 rating.

Vancouver's new front office now has to decide whether tying up nearly $12 million in a player trending the wrong way makes any sense during a full rebuild.

Red Wings hold all the cards on cap space and roster fit

Detroit finished 41-31-10 with 92 points, a respectable number that tells only part of the story. They went 2-6-2 over their final 10 games and were outscored across the full season, 241 goals for against 258 against.

Todd McLellan has Lucas Raymond at 76 points and Alex DeBrincat at 85 this year. The forward group is not barren.

But Dylan Larkin is 29 years old and earning $8.7 million, and if his future in Detroit becomes uncertain this summer, the center ice position turns into the biggest hole on the roster overnight.

That's where the Pettersson conversation gets real. Detroit beat Vancouver twice this season, 4-0 in December and 5-1 in January. Yzerman's scouts had a front-row seat to both.

Think of it like trading in a car that still runs for one that looked like a Ferrari two years ago and might again. Risky. Expensive. Potentially worth it.

Pettersson at 27 with a change of scenery is a better bet than waiting for a top-line center to surface in free agency. That market rarely produces.

The concern isn't the talent. It's the trend. Fifteen goals for a player making nearly $12 million on the league's worst team is a complicated read. The red flags are real.

Vancouver's division-worst -100 goal differential didn't land on Pettersson alone. But playing for a last-place team while going minus-30 for the season leaves questions that don't get answered until he plays somewhere with structure.

If Yzerman calls, new Canucks management answers. What comes back in return is the real negotiation, and Detroit's prospect depth gives them leverage they haven't had in years.

Whether Yzerman actually pulls the trigger on a deal this steep is the question the league's watching heading into the summer.

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