Canucks Insider Says Elias Pettersson Heading for a Buyout

It's been a disastrous season for the Vancouver Canucks' $92.8 million dollar man. Elias Pettersson's eight-year, $11.6 million AAV deal kicked in this year, and it's been ugly. The protracted chaos around the feud between him and teammate JT Miller led to a trade of the latter. And Pettersson's production has seen a significant dropoff from the 191 points he collected over the previous two years.

His skating and shooting are under extreme criticism, leading to an 11-goal, 35-point output thus far, down from 34 goals and 89 points last season. He's also taking far fewer shots, with only 94 through 53 games, which is on pace for his lowest shots total since his rookie season.

All of this has led veteran Canucks insider Farhan Lalji of TSN to predict that Pettersson might be heading towards a painful buyout of his massive contract—sooner or later.

"Truly, I believe at some point this contract of Elias Pettersson is going to get bought out, it's just a case of which team is going to end up doing it and what year.."@FarhanLaljiTSN on Elias Pettersson's play lately and how it has fallen off.https://t.co/OqRNnlRT5q pic.twitter.com/mYkQcY8WlC
— Donnie & Dhali (@DonnieandDhali) February 28, 2025

"Truly, I believe at some point this contract of Elias Pettersson is going to get bought out, it's just a case of which team is going to wind up doing it and in what year..," said Lalji.

The Canucks, of course, are hoping it'll be some other team that will have to deal with that. However, a full no-move clause comes into effect on July 1, for the final seven years of his deal, which runs until 2031-32.

Will Vancouver feel the pressure to trade him before the NMC kicks in?

Pettersson has been battling tendinitis in his knee for the past year+, but Lalji isn't buying that that's the problem here.

"It's baffling to me… 13 months. You have to believe that part of the problem is not the knee, it's between the ears. I just have my wonders if he'll ever get it back... Will he ever be a 100-point player again?

"I have big picture, long-term future questions about this player, beyond what's going to happen in these next 23 games."

Pettersson seemed to turn it on a bit in November & December, when he was pretty much a point-per-game player, with 9 goals and 24 points in those 25 games. But since then, he has just one goal in his last 19 games (none in the last 13), and just six points over that span. In six of those 19 games he didn't register a single shot.

Big decisions ahead for the Vancouver Canucks.