Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2026-27 edition Ask a direct question about this edition of the book — who, how many, how common, which group more — and it is answered with a table computed on this page from the edition’s index: the season line, height and age, the on-ice percentiles, the grades and the traits read out of every report. Ask for a view on named players — what a comparison comes down to, what makes a man — and you get the book’s reading of their own pages, and only those. The model turns your question into a query and phrases the result, or reads the pages it is handed; it never originates a figure, and an answer carrying a figure that is on neither the table nor the pages is withheld. It does not forecast, and it says so when a question is outside what the book holds.

Tables are computed on this page from the 2026-27 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.

Elias Pettersson

Photo by Matt.davs, CC BY-SA 4.0

Elias Pettersson

Vancouver Canucks Center #40

508 points, and 26 goals for against 55.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2018-19VAN71283866+312100714419.418:14
2019-20VAN68273966+161880516216.718:32
2020-21VAN26101121064016315.918:34
2021-22VAN80323668+112102319216.718:36
2022-23VAN803963102+161465625715.220:33
2023-24VAN82345589+20121301020716.419:39
2024-25VAN64153045-101470110913.818:40
2025-26VAN74153651-302041013211.418:58
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—545200308508+1610862833126615.819:03

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

15 goals and 36 assists in 74 games — 51 points, minus-30, at 18:58 a night with 4 power-play goals.

His 545th career game and his 508th point. 200 career goals.

The Finesse Game

The hands and the vision are still first-line quality — 36 assists on a club that scored 131 goals at 5-on-5, the fewest in the league, is a real number.

The shot has gone quiet. 222 unblocked attempts from a median of 29 feet with only 35 per cent from inside 20, and 15 goals. 3 seasons ago he scored 39; the volume is down, the location is worse, and the finish is gone.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 176 pounds, which is very light for a first-line centre, and 20 penalty minutes says he avoids what he can.

He does not win pucks on a wall and does not hold the front of a net. The skating is still excellent and it is carrying more of the game than it should have to.

The Intangibles

43.5 per cent of the expected goals, 8th percentile, and 44.4 per cent of the shot attempts, ninth, across 1,009 minutes — with the goals 30 for and 52 against.

26 goals for in 1,000 minutes is the lowest rate of any top-6 forward in this edition.

8 points in his last 10, none of them goals. He is 27, the fifth pick in 2017, and this is the third straight season the production has fallen. Vancouver is built around a player whose last genuinely good year was in 2023.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,009 minutes

Expected goals
43.5%
9th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
44.5%
10th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 30 for, 52 against. Expected: 38.4 and 50.0.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
78th
Numbers
9th

The report ranks him 69 points above where the numbers do. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 77 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

8

points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 8 assists, 25 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1009 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2025-26

The club
VAN took 43.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 43.5% — level with the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 1,009 minutes at five-on-five — 61st percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Evander Kane44.3%42.7%43.1%
Filip Hronek46.3%40.8%44.5%
Jake DeBrusk43.6%43.4%46.0%

44.3% together, 42.7% for him apart and 43.1% for Kane apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

222 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 15 of them goals. His median goal came from 22 feet. 36% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.