Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek on the 32 Thoughts: The Podcast – All Eyes are Sweden episode on the Elias Pettersson contract extension talk.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Marek: “What’s happening with Elias Pettersson and the much-talked-about contract extension?
Because after your boat ride, Elliot, things kind of got goofy.
Friedman: “I don’t think it was ever, ‘I’m not gonna stay here.’ I think it was, ‘I want to make sure we’re good.’
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And now what are we seeing? Are they on a bit of a PTO Bender as we call it, shooting percentage plus save percentage? Yeah, but you ride that wave. To me, they just look good. Like consistently. They are their best players are their best players.
And the other thing that Rick Tocchet does really well and I think this is really important, but the other thing that Rick Tocchet does really well, is he emboldens his role players. Look at Di Giuseppe, look at Dakota Joseph. Look at some of his depth defensemen. You know Mark Freedman and the Ian Cole pair for example. He emboldens those guys. He makes them feel important. And he gives them roles on the team that makes them feel important.
But the bottom line is, they are winning because their best players have been consistently great. And Pettersen is obviously a huge piece of that. Look, we know they’re talking. I think they’ve really tried to keep it under wraps, but Patrick Allvin decided to say ‘yes, yes, we’re talking’ and then the floodgates started open. So I think this is obviously in a very positive direction.
The question, I think there’s just a lot of places that this could go right now. And one of the places I think it can go is term. One of the things to hear and I talk about this a lot on this podcast, Jeff is, that the best determinant of future behavior is past behavior. And Pettersson is repped by CAA.
Earlier this year CAA did an extension with Owen Power in Buffalo and the Sabres wanted eight years. And the reason it got done was because they were willing to go down to seven. And the difference there was it meant that Power would sign his next contract at age 29 instead of 30. And in an analytics-driven world, which hockey is becoming more of, that’s a big deal. 29 versus 30 is a big deal.
For argument’s sake here, and I’m just keeping this in mind because it happened once, and like I said, they think about it there, they think about it here. Pettersson, if he signs a three-year deal, will next be eligible for an extension the summer before he turns 29. So I’m not saying it’s going to be a three-year deal. But I think it’s possible, possible that Pettersen goes for that area of term instead of eight for two reasons.
One, is agency will tell him you can get another deal when you’re 29 years old. And secondly, Pettersson to me is the kind of guy, and I say this in a good way, who would see Matthews doing a four-year deal and ask, why is he doing that and what’s the benefit?
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Marek: “Yes.”
Friedman: “And consider it because I think he’s a pretty intuitive guy. So like, like, so I think there’s time here. I don’t think anyone’s in a rush. I think this deal is going to get done at some point. But one question is going to be the cap, and the other question is going to be the term.
