The Vancouver Knucks have locked up Elias Petterson for eight years, $11.6 million per season. Before we talk about what a absolutely steal of a deal this is for a top 10, a lot would say top 5 center in the National Hockey League, I just want to talk a little bit about how we got here because it's this weird winding road and shocking that it just dropped on a Saturday morning after everything that went on this season with the Petterson contract. Because for months, since the beginning of the season through until last week, Pederson said, I'm not negotiating in-season. I don't care if you're upset that I'm going to be an RFA and my future isn't certain in Vancouver. I don't care. I'm not negotiating. And then last week, we got a report out of a couple of different media outlets that Petterson's unwillingness to negotiate is causing a problem within the Vancouver front offices. Those problems in the front offices are forcing them to look at a future without Elias Petterson and go to a team like Carolina and talk about a trade scenario. So So we get this fake, weird Carolina-Vancouver trade where they might be shipping Petterson out before the trade deadline, or this might happen during the summer if Petterson doesn't want to be there long term, and everybody's unsure about what his feelings are.

And out of all of those reports, we get the next stage of the reporting where Petterson is allowing his agent to speak to the Vancouver front office. He's allowing him to speak to Jim Rutherford and Patrick Alvine. From there, three days later, we get a full contract just like that. And all of that background knowledge Which leads us to this weird moment on Saturday morning where we have a full Petterson contract when we were under the impression that he was unsure of his future. We were under the impression that he would not talk to them midseason. We were under the impression that Vancouver might trade him eventually. Now we're just here where we should have been all along, which is a long eight-year deal, the maximum amount you can sign, a $11.6 million, which is great contract value. We'll get to that in a second. Petterson is going to be a Vancouver Knuck for the prime of his career. The contract contract itself. Let's talk about what a fabulous value this is. So right now, Petterson will have the fifth highest cap hit in the NHL. Chris Johnson of Sdpn and The Athletic and TSN, tweeted this out.

He said, Elias Petterson will carry the NHL's fifth highest cap hit at $11.6 million next season. In what is his final RFA year? Behind Austin Matthews, Nathan McKinnon, Connor McDavid, and Artemi Panarin. Now, there's arguments to say, Okay, Petterson's not the fifth best player in the league. But that's not how you got to look at this contract. You got to look at the $11.6 million in the context of the salary cap. Right now, Elias Petterson's contract next year, when the salary cap goes up, will be worth 12.8-ish % of the salary cap. Right now, John Tavares' contract... We got how many minutes we in? I'm talking about the least. Right now, John Tavares' contract on the least under this current salary cap is worth about 13.8 8% of the cap. Having one of the top five centers in the world signed at a cap percentage of around 12 something % is fabulous business. Every Knux fan should be happy. One, you have Petterson for the prime of his career. Rarely do you have a player signed through age 26 to 34. Those are the absolute prime NHL years. He's never going to be better. This is a 100-point center who will never be better during the eight years that the Knucks have him under contract.

For context, Austin Matthew signed a four-year deal in his prime with the Toronto Mapleies. They don't get him for the extended length of his entire prime. Mcdavid is coming up as a free agent at age 29, and McKinnon is signed from 28 to 36. So we have here the Vancouver Knucks capitalizing on the exact prime years of this player who they want around forever. You can't get better than that. And for the Canucks as a whole here, the most important thing is maximizing the cup window. The whole goal of this whole thing is winning a Stanley Cup. By signing Elias Petterson to this deal, you're maximizing your cup window. Now, guaranteed, as long as they want to keep them there and they don't trade these players, the Knucks have Thatcher Demko, Quin Hughes, JT Miller, Elias Petterson signed all four of them for at least the next two seasons. So this season plus the next two. Demko will be a free agent at that point. But if we want to drop Demko from that, we get Hughes, JT Miller, Elias Petterson all for the next three seasons after this season, which is a fabulous core to build around.

In there, you're going to have Besser come up as a UFA at the end of next season. Hopefully, he's signed to a decent amount of years after that. Let's not forget, the most important part of this Knux lineup, Elia Mikheilv, is also signed for the next two years. With the performance this this year, the window for the Knux is every single season you are going for the Stanley Cup. It's not to say that every team every year isn't trying to win the Stanley Cup, but there's different levels to this thing because there's contenders, there's pretenders, and then there's middling teams. The Knux are firmly in the contender's bracket and should be for a long time now with this deal locked up. It's an exciting time to be a Knux fan. If you're still not convinced that this is a absolutely fabulous deal, the cap's going up. The $11.6 million today is not the $11.6 million tomorrow. Yesterday's price is not today's price. The cap is going up. This deal gets cheaper and cheaper every single year of these eight years, which is just phenomenal news for the Knux and Knux fans. So be happy today.

Today is a day of celebration in Vancouver. And now what seemed like a giant distraction is gone. It was a giant distraction for, what, a week? And now it's been all solved. And now it's just all focused on what the Canucks are going to do between now and next Friday, the trade deadline, and what they do with their bolstered up roster from the trade deadline on through their, hopefully, deep payoff run. We'll see what happens. This is, like I said, a very good deal, a very good day in Knuxland.