Sportsnet 650: Jamie Dodd and Israel Fehr on Vancouver Canucks center Elias Pettersson’s next contract.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Dodd: “I did want to read this text. We were talking about Elias Pettersson’s next contract and the theoretical possibility of him going shorter term rather than the max eight-year commitment.
This texter says, ‘ discussed this previously but do you think Elias Pettersson’s going to lean more towards a shorter-termed deal given how terrible the Canucks have been?’ He says eight years is a long commitment to a team like the Canucks that have not shown they can build a winning team organizationally.
It’s can interesting thought cause we do so often.
Producer: “That is what I was saying yesterday. Maybe he wants to wait and see how the team looks this year.
Dodd: “We so often break down these decisions in terms of money and financial security.
Fehr: “Total money.”
Dodd: “Total money obviously. I don’t want (Thatch ??) to get mad at me because I’m not talking about total money. And look, that’s a huge factor, but there is something, guys want to win too. Elias Pettersson’s said as much.
He wants to be part of winning team and I don’t know if that would be the main thing driving him. I do think this year probably looms really large, right? Can the team be good this year? Man, how much would a playoff appearance, hey or even a playoff series win go to convincing Elias Pettersson to stick around on a longer term? Like, I think there’s something to that.
At a certain point if you want a really competitive guy like Elias Pettersson to sign long-term, you got to show him that you’re capable of supporting him and putting him in a position to success.
Producer: “I don’t want to seem like a doomer but if the team has an awful year and of course I hope they don’t, but if they do have an awful season this year and Petey still hasn’t signed going into the next offseason and they’re doing the negotiations, things are going to get hot and spicey.
It would be really nerve racking because you’ll have to wonder what his thought process is like. As the texter said, is this the team he thinks he can win long-term with? Do they have the vision in place? Are they on the same page? Do they have what it takes to build a contender?
And obviously I hope they have a great year. I hope they get off to a roaring start. Please to the love of God get off to a roaring start. I can’t do another one of these. Get off to a good start and I hope this isn’t an issue.
And hey, maybe he does sign this offseason but that’s gotta be, you have to think that. You know, that is a possibility.
Fehr: “Well they’re just, they’re so far from the run it back with this roster and with the way that things are working. Like, I was saying yesterday, they’re already on the third coach in three years. They’ve done the front office shuffle.
Yes, they moved their captain in a trade because they decided that they didn’t want to go long term at a big number for him. But they haven’t done really anything close to the moves that we talked about on this station for years now, of blowing it up.
And if they have a bad season, you just can not sit there and say, you know there were the years where the prospects are coming. They’re a team on the rise. Now they have pretty much you know an established core with players under contract.
Key is looking at this situation and going, ‘what’s the future going to look like.’ Another bad season, we are very far from being able to accept, that’s it for anybody, let alone the guy who will be at the center of it. A running back scenario.
Dodd: “And in the prime of his career and all that. You know the thing is, there’s been a lot of roster turnover under (Jim) Rutherford and (Patrik) Allvin but I don’t think the philosophy has changed necessarily from we’re going to try to be good, we’re going to try to find veterans and cheap young players to fill out the core.
So I wonder if, as you said, it’s three coaches, it’s two management groups all with essentially the same team building philosophy. You can say that Rutherford and Allvin have executed that a lot more successfully and have been better at finding those players. I think that’s true undeniably but the philosophy is pretty similar of, we’re going to take a step back, we’re going to push forward, we’re going to try and fill out the roster around these core players.
If it doesn’t work this year, I wonder if even a guy like Pettersson who, players never want to take a step back, but at a certain point you have to look at it and say, ‘what are we doing here?’
Let’s maybe, we tried changing coaches, we tried changing GMs. Maybe we just need to change out philosophy and our operating philosophy here for a little bit. That would be my question.
