It took the Vancouver Canucks most of the season to finally trade for Marcus Pettersson.

It took them less than a week after that, however, to extend him.

Last Friday, Pettersson arrived via a trade with the Pittsburgh Penguins. At the time, many opined that the first round pick sent to Pittsburgh (along with Danton Heinen, Vincent Desharnais, and prospect Melvin Fernstrom) in exchange for Pettersson (and Drew O’Connor) was too rich for a rental, but let it be known that they’d feel better about it were Pettersson to be signed to an extension.

So, how should those fans feel right about now?

Better. A lot better, actually.

In short, Pettersson’s six-year, $5.5 million AAV contract already looks great in the present moment, and it’s not scheduled to kick in until next season of 2025/26. By that point, it’s going to look even better, and continue on from there.

You know, kind of the opposite of what usually happens with UFA signings.

Let’s start with the current value. By a rough count, Pettersson ranks 50^th overall in average ice-time among NHL defenders over the past three seasons at 21:50. Actually, he’s tied for 50^th overall with Shea Theodore, who just signed a seven-year, $7.43 million AAV extension of his own.

Now, ice-time isn’t the be-all and end-all of assessing an NHL defender’s value. But we could use this quick and dirty method to suggest that Pettersson is, at minimum, a top-50 D in this league, which would make him a middle-bottom-end top pairing defender. That sounds about accurate.

We could quibble about the exact ranking of Pettersson among his peers. If we wanted to do that, we’d note that his 52.1% Corsi over the past three seasons is the 25^th best among defenders who have played as many minutes.

But we really don’t have to in order to make this deal look good.

As of this writing, Pettersson’s $5.5 million cap hit is slated to rank him 55^th overall in defence salaries for the 2025/26 season. By ice-time, it’s a slight underpay, by performance, it’s probably a significant underpay. And we’ve really got to emphasize the ‘as of this writing’ piece.

Because more contracts will be signed before this one even starts. There are at least 56 different D who played NHL games this season and will be UFAs this summer, and 33 more set to be RFAs. Not all of those players will sign at cap hits greater than Pettersson’s $5.5 million, but some will.

That means before his contract even begins, it will slide further down the rankings, probably into the 60s or lower.

And that’s just in the very immediate future. A future which, as our own David Quadrelli adroitly pointed out, will also feature some very significant cap increases.

These ceiling raises will give the Pettersson contract additional value in two compounding ways. The first is, as Quadrelli noted, by making it so that Pettersson’s cap hit represents an ever smaller slice of the total team salary. The second is by ensuring that the purse-strings are loose in this summer and over the next few, which ensures that many of those other contracts signed in the interim will be a little pricier.

That’s just the market in a suddenly flush NHL economy. But it’s a market the Canucks have already cornered by locking Pettersson down to this deal before the Free Agent Frenzy even had a chance to begin.

By Year Two of this deal, which happens to be Pettersson’s age 30 season, he should rank somewhere around the 75^th-highest paid defender in the league. Maybe even lower than that. Such a number should represent compensation for a slightly-above-average second pairing defender. But Pettersson is a lot more than that, and should remain so for the foreseeable future. Most seem to agree, in fact,  that his play is more of top pairing quality, especially when he’s on a better team than the Penguins have been of late.

This deal covers Pettersson from age 29 through to 34. Those aren’t exactly ‘prime years,’ but they might be called ‘late prime’ or perhaps ‘prime-adjacent.’ They definitely don’t cross over into twilight years, and that’s important in making sure a contract will age well. In the Canucks’ case, with their current plans for competitiveness, we’d argue that those first few years of the contract are the ones that ‘matter,’ anyway.

Here’s where we can circle back to that rising cap once again, because it also helps ensure that if any age-related drop-off in Pettersson’s play occurs, it will be less consequential, because his cap hit will represent an ever smaller percentage of the total cap. By Year 3 of this deal, when Pettersson is just 31, the cap will be almost 30% higher than it is right now, and thus a $5.5 million cap hit will be a third less costly, by comparison.

So, to recap, one could definitely make the argument that $5.5 million is a decent underpayment for Pettersson’s present-day performance and contributions. But even if one didn’t agree with that, and deemed it only ‘fair,’ they’d then have to agree that the contract is all but destined to remain a true appreciating asset.

Look, there is going to be some serious shock and awe this offseason as the NHL fully moves out of the flat-cap era and the ceiling goes rocketing up for the first time in more than half-a-decade.

Some of the contracts that get signed are going to look silly.

And all the while, the Canucks are going to already have the UFA that they probably would have considered their number one target locked up to a contract that very much belongs in the old, more restricted era of NHL spending.

It’s a great deal, is what we’re saying. And one that will only get better from here on out.

As a result, this signing gets an A letter grade.