Jim Benning says he'll match any offer sheet for Pettersson, but does the accounting really add up? Let's see.

As of today, July 23, 2021, the Vancouver Canucks have $15,174,131 in cap space, according to CapFriendly. Their estimated cap hit includes all of their currently signed players, Micheal Ferland and Jay Beagle (currently listed as on LTIR), Loui Eriksson's remaining cap hit after being buried in the minors, Roberto Luongo's cap recapture penalty, and the $648,780 in bonus overage penalties they incurred this past season.

Let's say... the Seattle Kraken put in an offer sheet for Elias Pettersson of 5 years at $8,221,463 (the maximum they can offer sheet for and only have to pony up a 1st, a 2nd, and a 3rd, before it becomes 2 1sts, instead). This contract, incidentally, would probably bring Pettersson right up to UFA status. If the Canucks match it, that leaves them with $6,952,668 in cap space.

But! The Canucks have 17 roster players signed. If they get Pettersson and Quinn Hughes signed, that only puts them at 19, and they would ideally like to be able to have 23 players on their roster. If they want to skimp super-hard, they could sign 4 players at league-minimum salary, $750,000. But that's now an extra $3,000,000 that gets subtracted away from your remaining cap space. Meaning! That, if the Canucks matched this hypothetical offer sheet, that would realistically leave them with $3,952,668 to hand over to Hughes (who is, realistically, worth more than $3,952,668/year). This is also to say nothing of signing Jason Dickinson, whom Benning ponied up a 3rd-round pick for and would ideally not alienate by only giving him a league-minimum contract.

I don't really see this ending well if Jim Benning tries to match such an offer sheet. Ostensibly, Quinn Hughes is a 10.2(c) player, meaning that he's stuck between a rock and a hard place if the Canucks try to offer him a bridge deal that's under $4M/year. Still, Benning shouldn't be alienating the linchpin of the Canucks' defense like that. Hughes is clearly worth at least $8M/year, if Miro Heiskanen and Thomas Chabot's contracts are anything to go by. Possible outcomes:

1) Hughes takes a bridge deal of sub-$4M/year for, I dunno, 1 or 2 years, and then demands $10M+ on his next contract (a.k.a. the "P.K. Subban special"). I guess it works in the short term, but that's just kicking the can down the road.

2) Benning plays hardball with Hughes' camp, and he ends up sitting out until just before the deadline to be able to play at all for the season (a.k.a. the "William Nylander special"). Hughes' cap hit goes down for this year but then balloons next year, thus also kicking the can down the road.

3) Benning has to scramble to dump any and all contracts that would get in the way of signing Hughes to a fair contract. He may or may not find any takers, or he has to pay a hilariously exorbitant price to dump said contracts (this is where I think the Coyotes should maneuver back into the 1st round this year by taking Loui Eriksson's contract off of their hands in exchange for the 9th overall pick).

Either way, things are already bad for Benning and Friends, and an offer sheet would, imo, speed up the process.