Managing Elias Pettersson’s future is one of the most consequential tasks facing the Vancouver Canucks’ new front office this offseason.This, of course, won’t be exclusively their decision to make. Pettersson has a full no-movement clause on a contract that has six years remaining at an $11.6 million cap hit. He has the final say, so any plan about his future will need to be a collaborative process between him and the incoming management regime.To say Pettersson’s relationship with the fanbase and organization is complicated would be an understatement.After a dominant 102-point campaign in 2022-23 and another superstar-calibre first half of the season in 2023-24, the Canucks re-signed Pettersson to his infamous eight-year extension. Since then, Pettersson hasn’t just declined; his performance has fallen off in a near-unprecedented way for a player in their mid- to late-20s.The now 27-year-old Swede was a shadow of himself in the 2024 Stanley Cup playoffs, where he scored only one goal in 13 games. He slumped to just 45 points in 64 games in 2024-25, and this season, he failed to make progress, scoring 51 points in 74 games.It’s not just that his production has dried up; it’s how fundamentally different he looks by the eye test. Pettersson was an incredibly dynamic rush attacker at his peak, but over the last two years, his skating stride and puck-carrying ability through the neutral zone have looked compromised. He’s unable to separate from checkers and create space to shoot from dangerous areas and make elite plays at a high volume.It’s as if he’s slowly morphing into an Elias Lindholm-type centre — he’s hardworking, attentive defensively and is smart enough to still score at a second-line level, but there’s very little dynamic play-creating, and he can’t drive a line offensively on his own anymore.All of that leads us to a few burning questions: Should the Canucks explore trading him? Is he even tradeable, and if so, what’s his value? How does the rising cap climate and the NHL’s general shortage of top-six centres impact the organization’s incentives and considerations?Here’s a look at a few factors the Canucks should be thinking about on the Pettersson file, after conversations with two NHL executives who were granted anonymity so they could speak freely.One of the first points people bring up when discussing Pettersson’s disappointing performance is that he’s been saddled with middling linemates and subpar support. There’s absolutely some truth to this, but it’s a nuanced topic. Pettersson played at least 150 five-on-five minutes this season with six different wingers: Jake DeBrusk, Evander Kane, Conor Garland, Drew O’Connor, Brock Boeser and Linus Karlsson.None of those are first-line calibre wingers. There’s zero doubt that this is holding him back to some degree. However, it’s also true that the peak version of Pettersson from three years ago was so dynamic and dominant that he could drive a first line on his own.In 2022-23, when Pettersson scored 102 points, his most common five-on-five linemates, according to Natural Stat Trick, were Andrei Kuzmenko, Ilya Mikheyev and Anthony Beauvillier.That’s hardly any better than the crop of linemates he’s had over the past two years. Kuzmenko was a one-hit wonder who mostly rode Pettersson’s coattails — he’s failed to hit 50 points in a single season across three different organizations since leaving Vancouver. Mikheyev and Beauvillier, meanwhile, are speedy, hardworking bottom-six forwards with limited scoring touch.So yes, mediocre linemates have accelerated Pettersson’s fall-off, but that alone cannot explain his perplexing decline.“The biggest problem with the Elias Pettersson story is that both sides failed each other,” said a front office source from another NHL team. “If you think about it, the best (winger) that ever probably played on his line, that fit the way he wanted to play, was Tyler Toffoli, and that’s a pretty damning place to be as an organization that gave a player that big of a commitment without a surefire way to support that player.”That linemates factor is also why there’s likely to still be interest in Pettersson’s services this summer. There will likely be at least a few rival teams with a need down the middle who will believe they can unlock more from Pettersson by insulating him with more talented wingers, a better team environment, and the psychological benefit of a fresh start. Any potential interest in Pettersson will certainly also be fuelled by what’s arguably the worst free-agent class in NHL history — 39-year-old Evgeni Malkin is the only centre that cracked Chris Johnston’s top-20 free-agents list.Another NHL front-office executive The Athletic spoke with was confident that Pettersson’s contract is movable. The huge caveat, though, is that he predicted the offers wouldn’t include any premium draft picks or prospects and might still require Vancouver to take back another team’s inefficient contract.