Amidst all the excitement of the 2026 NHL Entry Draft and coming off a week of blockbuster deals, we got another couple of sizeable trades on Friday evening. And the largest of them was probably the one that sent pending RFA Pavel Dorofeyev from the Vegas Golden Knights to the New York Rangers in exchange for the 26^th overall pick, a top-ten protected 2028 first rounder, and a 2026 third rounder.

But the trade itself sort of paled in comparison to the whopping seven-year, $11 million AAV contract the Rangers immediately handed Dorofeyev.

Now, us followers of the Vancouver Canucks are a little self-centred by nature, which means a lot of us probably had a similar thought when that contract was announced. Something along the lines of “Well, maybe Elias Pettersson is no longer the worst NHL player with an $11 million salary!”

Before we get too into the weeds here, we’ll acknowledge that there are some who would take Dorofeyev over Pettersson, especially in his current state. Dorofeyev is coming off consecutive seasons of 35 and 37 goals, just went to the Cup Finals, and has only completed three full NHL seasons.

But at the same time, Dorofeyev has been criticized as a complementary winger, one who doesn’t drive much play himself but relied on Vegas’ bevy of other play-driving forwards to set up his goal-scoring opportunities. And it must be said that last season’s breakout campaign only resulted in a career-high of 64 points for Dorofeyev. Meanwhile, a highly disappointing 2025-26 campaign for Pettersson saw him pace just six points behind that at 57.

So, even at his worst, Pettersson is about as productive as Dorofeyev at his best. Not to mention he plays a more important position, has a much stronger defensive reputation, and has a history of doing much, much more.

We’re not really here to compare the two, though. We’re here to point out that the Dorofeyev contract almost automatically makes Pettersson’s look more reasonable – or a little less unreasonable, if you’d rather. And that can’t help but have a positive impact on Pettersson’s value, or, really, the value of anyone else the Canucks might be looking to trade in the near future.

We also suspect this phenomenon will keep recurring in this new, post-flat-cap era, as soon as the upcoming Free Agent Frenzy. Dorofeyev’s contract was an RFA deal, not a UFA one, but it’s probably only a preview of the enormous deals that GMs are about to hand out this summer.

Part of that will be standard free agency tomfoolery. But a decent amount of it is just sticker shock as the NHL adjusts more firmly into a new financial reality. Prices are going up, and that makes the value of fixed assets – those NHLers already under long-term contracts – a good investment at this time.

As of right now, trading for Pettersson would be a tough sell for any franchise and any fanbase. He’s essentially an $11.6 million 2C. But have enough complementary top-line wingers like Dorofeyev and other free agents to come start signing their own $11 million deals, and Pettersson’s will continue to look more and more justifiable, if never quite ‘fair.’ How long until it’s just an overpayment, as opposed to a gross overpayment? How long until it’s merely a little exorbitant for a 2C, instead of outrageous?

As Pettersson’s contract slides further and further down the ‘top-paid’ charts and continues to represent a smaller and smaller percentage of the cap ceiling, how could his tradeability do anything but increase?

We’ve talked before about Pettersson’s potential to bounce back a bit and manually restore some of his trade value. But contracts like Dorofeyev’s give us hope that, even without any sort of rebound, Pettersson might still ultimately be someone the Canucks can return for value for eventually.

Speaking of trade value, we’d suggest that contracts like Dorofeyev’s, like a rising tide, lift the trade value ‘boats’ of most of the Canucks’ tenured veterans.

Let’s talk about Jake DeBrusk, the veteran most expect to be traded from the Canucks this offseason. Dorofeyev scored 20 power play goals in the 2025-26 season. DeBrusk scored 19 power play goals. And now, as of the 2026-27 books, DeBrusk will be making literally half of what Dorofeyev does with a cap hit of just $5.5 million. Soon enough, a contract like that, from what is now the bygone era of 2025 free agency, stops looking like just ‘a good deal’ and starts to look like an outright bargain.

And as other wingers, centres, defenders, and goaltenders sign their own huge contracts in the weeks, months, and years to come, that same effect should hit plenty of Canucks’ contracts. Think about Marcus Pettersson, signed at $5.5 million until 2031. Think especially about Filip Hronek, who should still be a top-pairing RD in his prime in 2029 when his NMC turns into a limited-NTC, and will still have several years of a $7.25 million cap hit left over. At that point, that should be about average money for a top-four D, and that will give Hronek an enormous amount of trade value.

We’ve spoken before about the regret factor in some of these lengthy veteran contracts that the Canucks have handed out in recent years, and there are still plenty of regrets to be felt there. But the changing nature of the NHL cap, and the contracts contained within, might just conspire to make some of these contracts a whole lot less regrettable, a whole lot more reasonable by comparison, and a whole lot more valuable on the larger trade market.

Dorofeyev was one of the first, and his sticker shock was felt particularly strongly as a result, but he won’t be the last, and folks are going to have to get used to the new salary standards. All the while, many of the Canucks’ largest contracts will stay on the books exactly as they are.

It’s not an awful place for a rebuilding team, eager to make trades that bring in future assets, to be.