The answer is we don't know. And in fact, the answer probably is EP doesn't know for sure. If I was in his position I wouldn't decide until the last moment I needed to decide. But he probably is leaning one way or the other. We just have no insight into his feelings.
Putting on the detective hat, we can say what we know
- Vancouver is a pretty nice city to live if you are wealthy. Probably one of the nicest overall
- The team has a decent amount of high end talent to play with
- They have underperformed drastically for a while, and the depth of the team has been fairly weak and absurdly overpriced... but cap issues probably are outside a players care-meter
- The coaching seems to have been pretty poor for years. However, this looks like the best coaching staff they've had in forever, and the tiny snippets we see from the team seem to reflect that... the players seem to be buying in
- I don't know if players are very cognizant of this, but the management has been overhauled
- Still a meddlesome owner who seems to want to do things his way, probably interfering
- Pettersson has been able to crack 100 points with this team (I assume he could do so with any team, but it's not a guarantee)
- He has seemed to have changing levels of motivation to the team, or perhaps to the game itself, which are reflected in the scoring droughts he has had ... which is probably why he hasn't hit 70 points until this year ... although these periods could easily be explained by injuries, as far as we know
- He has at least one winger who appears to be able to think the game at as high a level as himself
- He seems to care very much about winning. He's won at every level he's played up until the NHL
- He's made some comments that indicate he wants to have the chance to win here if he signs long term
All told, Vancouver is a pretty good situation for a young millionaire athlete. People will argue over what position the team is in. Most will probably say the team is going to be bad next year. I am on record saying the opposite, I think the team will do well next year. I think it's a good situation for Pettersson, as long as the team shows signs of improvement. You never know what someone is thinking, but I'd say there's a good chance Petey would be willing to re-sign. As an example, Kuzmenko had a choice of 32 teams to sign with.