A new unexpected destination has surfaced in an Elias Pettersson trade

The executive who would acquire him already knows exactly how that story went.

David Pagnotta told Inside Sports the Seattle Kraken want to make a splash, and floated Elias Pettersson as the kind of centre they covet.

The hook everyone grabbed was the no-move clause, and whether Pettersson would waive it for Seattle.

The Los Angeles Kings backed off over the price, which is how Seattle drifted to the front of the line.

That framing treats Seattle as a blank slate for a player coming off a brutal year: 51 points and a minus-30 on an $11.6 million cap hit. It isn't one.

The Kraken's assistant general manager is Patrik Allvin, the same executive who ran Vancouver until he was fired this spring after the Canucks finished dead last.

Allvin handed Pettersson his eight-year extension, then traded J.T. Miller to end the public feud that had split the franchise's core.

So the "fresh start" pitch runs through the one front office in the league that watched Pettersson's decline from the inside. Jason Botterill would be betting on a rebound his own deputy already bet on and lost.

For a player with full control of his destination, this stops being "will he waive" and becomes "will he waive to reunite with Allvin."

Pettersson would also see Vancouver four times a year in the Pacific, turning every meeting into a referendum on the split.

Ryan Johnson's Canucks may retain salary to move on, per The Fourth Period, but Seattle only makes sense if Pettersson wants the one door that leads back to the people he left.

That is a very different story than a clean escape, and it is the part nobody is pricing in.

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