Elias Pettersson's price tag around the league just got clearer, and it may not be as steep as the Maple Leafs feared.
The Vancouver Canucks are buried in the standings heading into the weekend, sitting 32nd overall at 25-49-8 with 58 points.
Pettersson has posted 51 points in 74 games this season, with 15 goals and 36 assists, though his plus-minus sits at -30.
Thomas Drance of The Athletic reported this week that a team chasing Pettersson should expect a deal shaped like the one Edmonton used to move Darnell Nurse.
Nurse carries a cap hit of $9,250,000. Vancouver isn't hunting for a haul of prospects, they're hunting for relief, the way a landlord just wants the lease gone rather than top dollar.
That's good news for Toronto if ownership is actually serious about Pettersson. Getting him won't be cheap, but it won't require gutting the pipeline either.
Pettersson himself carries a cap hit of $11,600,000. Morgan Rielly's $7,500,000 deal needs to move first, and even then Toronto is staring at a gap.
Rielly's exit alone won't cover Toronto's Pettersson math
Moving Rielly clears cap space. It doesn't clear enough of it, not against a Vancouver front office still deciding what retention even looks like here.
Max Domi's $3,750,000 cap hit offers Toronto some wiggle room depending on how his situation shifts, but it still doesn't close the whole gap by itself.
So where does the rest come from? Toronto likely needs a third team willing to eat money in exchange for futures, and those deals don't build themselves overnight.
Chasing a top-six center without that third team lined up first is a bad idea, and it's the kind of mistake that costs a front office real draft capital.
Vancouver enters this stretch on a one-game skid, 4-6 in its last 10 under head coach Manny Malhotra, who's still shaping what this roster becomes.
Whether Pettersson is even on the ice in a Canucks sweater come the trade deadline is still very much an open question.
Should the Maple Leafs go all in on Elias Pettersson even without a third team lined up?
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