Now that the Stanley Cup has been awarded, the offseason is officially underway.

The NHL Draft is just over a week away, and the start of free agency isn’t long after that. Trade activity is already picking up, with Nashville and Colorado, and San Jose and Buffalo already making trades.

And if you listen to some of the chatter around the league, forward Elias Pettersson is on the market by the Vancouver Canucks.

If you ignore his contract, Pettersson’s production is decent enough to certainly have suitors. In 74 games last season, he scored 15 goals and 36 assists for 51 points. But when you factor in the price tag, six more years at $11.6 million per, that point total looks a lot less attractive.

The relationship between Pettersson and the Canucks has steadily gone downhill over the last few seasons. Now, two years after signing that ill-fated extension in 2024, it feels like it might finally be time for both sides to shake hands and part ways. His contract is virtually buyout-proof, so any departure of Pettersson from Vancouver would require a trade. That’s where the Pittsburgh Penguins and general manager Kyle Dubas might come into play.

It’s natural to link the Penguins to a player like this. The cap dump trade has become a staple of the Dubas-era Penguins.

There’s the pure cap dump, like taking on Kevin Hayes and his $3.5 million dollar deal in 2024 or when the Penguins added the contract of Matt Dumba last summer. Both trades netted the Penguins a second-round selection in a future draft.

There’s the change of scenery style of moves, where the Penguins take on an unsavory contract but find a way to deploy them in Pittsburgh. Connor Clifton, who came to Pittsburgh with a second rounder at the draft last year, and found a home as a physical depth defenseman on the blue line.

Then there’s the buy-low, sell-high trades that Dubas has executed as well. Someone like Cody Glass is a good example of that; the Penguins added assets to take on his money, and were able to eventually flip him for further futures.

And then there’s this kind of deal, one that would involve swinging an anchor of a contract across North America. Embarking on an acquisition like Pettersson would admittedly be a stretch, even for a general manager like Dubas who has shown a tendency to try these types of trades out.

Pettersson’s 51 points is literally half of the 102-point campaign he had just a few short years ago. Back in the 2022-23 season, the Swedish sensation scored 39 goals, tied for the Canuck lead, and added 63 assists. He had six power play goals, five shorthanded markers, and six game-winners. He scored in a variety of ways all over the ice.

As one would expect, he did regress the following year, but he was still above a point-per-game with 34 goals and 55 assists (89 points). It was those two years in particular that got Pettersson paid, and those two years that now have left the Canucks with an ugly contract they’d love to get out from underneath.

Since then, Pettersson is averaging just 48 points a season and 57 points per 82 games. For the money he’s owed, it’s not worth it. Aside from the drop in points, his work ethic (or lack thereof) on the ice has come under heavy criticism and scrutiny.

And that’s what makes taking on Pettersson the ultimate gamble. It’s not just that the contract is hefty and has over half a decade left on it, it’s the question of whether Pettersson is willing and able to try and get back to his better days with the Canucks.

But, one thing is pretty clear: his best chance for getting back to that aren’t in Vancouver. The Canucks know that, and he probably knows that too. It’s just time for a fresh start.

If you’re the Penguins, and this is an idea you want to pursue, the best time to make that bet is this summer. Pettersson’s value on the trade market has never been lower, and while Vancouver currently has about $22 million in cap space (and therefore aren’t exactly in a rush to clear room), they would love to move on from that deal.

Vancouver likely doesn’t want to retain for that long, but the Penguins can probably offset some of the cost by sending some of their own bad money (like the contract of Ryan Graves) up to the northwest as part of whatever deal the two make.

In the short term, you can try slotting him in at second-line center, where the Penguins are lacking every since it was vacated by Evgeni Malkin. With Geno now on the wing, the team’s two main options are Tommy Novak and Ben Kindel.

In an ideal world, Novak isn’t centering the second line; Kindel, meanwhile, is still just 19. There’s time for him to grow into that role later on.

In the longer term, perhaps the Penguins can snag a key piece of their longterm future.

It’s hard to believe, given that he’s a pre-Covid NHLer, but the forward is also just 27 years old. He’s not that far out of the general age range of players Dubas has acquired via trade over the last year or so. Egor Chinakhov was 24 when the Penguins acquired him. So was Elmer Söderblom. On the blue line, Ilya Solovyov. Just a few days ago, Dubas picked up a 26-year-old forward in a swap with Florida.

Assuming Pettersson can even somewhat bounce back, trading for a player several years under 30 gives him and the Penguins a lot of runway.

At this point, it’s hard to imagine that Pettersson can get back to the triple-digit point season that he had in 2022-23. But believing he can get back to a 70-80 point range feels somewhat realistic. For this upcoming season, $11.6 million against the cap is still an overpayment for that.

But with the way the salary cap is rising, that’s a figure that will become easier and easier to manage. We aren’t all that far away from second-line centers who score 70-80 points to make that regularly.

And while he works on getting back to his game, he doesn’t have to be the face of a franchise.

Unlike in Vancouver, Pettersson can duck under the spotlight that his fellow forwards Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin still garner in Pittsburgh. Some players do better with less attention on them; look at how Phil Kessel thrived here.

That gives Pettersson years to settle into a new market, get back to some more productive seasons, and if all goes well, sets him up to be back to his best self by the time the next era of Penguins hockey has fully taken over.

If the Penguins are seriously interested, it’s certainly a gamble. It’s the biggest one of the Dubas era. But in studying how Dubas operates, there’s certainly a chance this is the kind of move he thinks can benefit the Penguins both now and in the future.