An insurance issue will keep Canucks forward Elias Pettersson from playing at World Championships

“How do you insure what does not exist?”

That was the quote Sweden’s general manager Anders Lundberg gave Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet when discussing why Vancouver Canucks forward Elias Pettersson won’t be suiting up for his home country at the IIHF World Championships in Finland next month.

It’s a fair question, because insurance is ultimately what’s going to keep Pettersson away from the tournament, which he originally planned on participating in. Pettersson, who put up 102 points with the Canucks this past season, was slated to reunite with Sam Hallam, his coach from his time with the Växjö Lakers.

Unfortunately, securing the disability insurance that Pettersson was looking for proved too difficult for Sweden to pull off. Pettersson needed to be protected from loss of future earnings for his next contract, and he’s due for a big raise when that contract kicks in. The problem ended up being that that contract does not yet exist.

“Next year’s contract was not a problem to secure, it was the contract after that,” said Rick Dhaliwal when talking about the situation on Donnie and Dhali. “The Canucks and Pettersson’s agent want the next contract to be insured and the Swedish Hockey Federation said ‘can’t do it, won’t do it, it’s too expensive’. It costs them like $2-3 million in Swedish money. It’s too expensive.”

Pettersson was slated to be Sweden’s top player at the tournament, and him having to sit out certainly hurts Sweden’s chances at success.

As for the rest of the Canucks, Conor Garland will represent Team USA and Ethan Bear will join Team Canada at the tournament, which begins on May 12th and concludes on May 28th.