Unless the Canes offered Slavin+ (obviously not gonna happen) I would much rather keep him.
Then clear cap in other ways, inquire about Zub using Garland as a chip (gotta give to get) and make a push in a pretty weak pacific, good chance the flames and Oilers lose a key player or two. If things go terribly then move him at the deadline or maybe this team continues what it started under Bruce and we have all season to re-sign him, he wants to win, we don't need him to takwe a hometown discount (would be nice) we have 38 million in cap space off the books and paying your superstars is never a bad thing and guys like Pearson, Myers, Poolman, Dickenson, can be moved or not brought back.
Vancouver despite what some seem to think have a very favorable cap structure after next season and with the cap expected to go as his 90+ in 3 years and Petey the only guy potentially becoming a 10 million+ dollar player and let's be honest if that happened it means he's become a 100 point player so no problem with that. Quinn and Demko are on fantastic long-term deals, Horvat should get 7.5×8 Brock 6-7, JT right now deserves to be our highest paid player and given his age 8-8.5 is exactly where he should land, he theoretically might get more as a ufa next summer but that's a huge risk for not a huge payoff and you got to think his people would steer him towards a guaranteed life changing deal opposed to possibly regressing or God forbid a career ending injury.
It's fun for us fans to speculate and create proposals but 9 times out of 10 star players usually stay put and in JT's case as far as we know he loves Vancouver he's respected by the young core who clearly look to him as a leader on and off the ice, the coach loves him and honestly if you go on nucks. com, 90% of the people there in a vacuum would trade any forward not named Petey before JT and that site has far more fans that actually support the team financially while HF is full of dudes that got banned from CDC and are Fairweather fans.