Oh boy, get this: Elias Pettersson, the wunderkind center for the Canucks, who’s obviously too busy racking up points to chat about tedious contract talks, has basically said “Talk to the hand” (or stick, in this case) when it comes to any pre-offseason contract chit-chat. I mean, with the dude shattering the century mark in points last season and set to do it again, who can blame him for waiting to play hardball until summer? His qualifying offer is sitting pretty at $8.82 million, but let’s be real – they’ll probably need to back a Brinks truck up to his house with a few million more to keep him in the mix.
Let’s dish out some more Canucks craziness while we’re at it:
Last night, the Canucks’ Twitter account dropped the news that Linus Karlsson, pretty much the human yo-yo of the season, was yoinked up from the AHL’s Abbotsford again. This guy’s been called up more times than a telemarketer’s phone, but chances to strut his stuff on the ice with Vancouver have been about as rare as a polite hockey fight. With a solid stat line of nine goals and twenty-five points in twenty-seven AHL games, he just might fill the skates of Andrei Kuzmenko, who, according to Postmedia’s Patrick Johnston, could be warming the bench.
And speaking of the not-so-mighty Kuzmenko, who’s apparently hit a sophomore slump like it’s a wall made of bricks, Sportsnet’s Iain McIntyre is throwing his name around as the potential salary cap sacrificial lamb. I mean, you gotta clear some space if you wanna go shopping, right? This time last year, everyone thought Tyler Myers and his juicy $6 million would be the one to get the “It’s not you, it’s us” speech. But now? Myers is like the VIP at the blue line, while Kuzmenko, despite being only a hot minute away from a thirty-nine-goal season, is being sized up as the guy who might just need a change of scenery… even if he’s not exactly a bargain at $5.5 million through next season.