Frankly, this "poor skating in his last slump" is entirely an invention. There is absolutely no merit to it or any evidence that it happened and it's completely made up as an excuse to crap on him.
I have already posted this several times but there is a ton of eye witness accounts (i.e., evidence) that Pettersson skated poorly in his last slump. I found the following ten quotes with a quick search of the old Pettersson thread. I didn't review the whole thread, or even look at any game day threads, but you can peruse those and you will almost certainly find more similar accounts. The idea that this is just an "invention" is totally inaccurate and revisionist history.
-He's not skating. There was a play in one of the Ducks Games where he was forechecking and Getzlaf had the puck. Instead of skating and catching that old f*** he instead started reaching with his stick and Getzlaf blew by him
-Effort on that EN goal says it all. Just giving zero f***s out there.
-He's weak on his skates and doesn't seem as fast.
-His speed/hustle that was so evident in year 1 is gone
-The passing, the skating, the turnovers it's just all bad.
-He just doesn't move his feet at all. He just glides around.
-Physically speaking, the issue seems to be that a gentle breeze knocks him over, and he seems to have substituted skating with coasting around.
-Kid can't even skate or make 10 foot passes.
-he's not a fast skater, he's not a strong skater
-EP has completely checked out on a physical level. He is just going through the motions, he is the epitome of being easy to play against. Maybe someone should point that out to him?
-If EP can't be bothered to actually move his legs when he's on the ice, I have no problem with seeing what the trade market is like, although it's hard to imagine getting good value for a player who falls to the ice once per shift.
As for the slump, it was a below average season by his standards but nothing out of a normal variation that players go through. He still scored 32 goals.
This is more revisionist history. He scored like 26 goals after January 15th and was terrible for the first three months or so. He had 17 points over the first 37 games for a .45 ppg clip.
This he "couldn't skate in 2021" thing is a complete fabrication. You've repeated it enough that people are also starting to repeat it but you completely made it up.
It isn't a fabrication, and if you had have told people that Pettersson was skating well during his last slump you would have been laughed at.