I think the likely outcome is that it's one of Heinen or Suter with Pettersson. But both of them wouldn't work either. Pettersson still desperately needs some element of speed, grit, and directness to make some space to operate, apply pressure, forecheck, force turnovers and draw defensive attention and rotation, etc. Even just to push the pace as Petey can become very static very quickly if he doesn't have energetic players pushing things forward. He can't do any of that himself, and neither of Heinen or Suter are really any good at that stuff either.
The sort of forgotten man in all this is Podkolzin too i think. He's got a shot at offering something to that mix as well. If he can be a forechecker, physical presence, puck possession element.
But i'd think it lands on something with one of Heinen/Suter...playing a smart, complementary role to Pettersson+DeBrusk's pace and north-south game.
Certainly always a chance the Petey+DeBrusk experiment just doesn't click. And in that case, i think the "fallback" of DeBrusk playing with JT+Boeser is still a pretty darn good option. But i'm sure they'll give it every opportunity to try to gel with Pettersson first, just as they did with Mikheyev over and over again. And as they should really.
