Elias Pettersson

Last Season

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

His 545th career game and his 508th point. Two hundred career goals.

The Finesse Game

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

The shot has gone quiet. Two hundred and twenty-two unblocked attempts from a median of 29 feet with only 35 per cent from inside twenty, and fifteen goals. Three seasons ago he scored thirty-nine; the volume is down, the location is worse, and the finish is gone.

The Physical Game

Six foot two and 176 pounds, which is very light for a first-line centre, and twenty 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

Forty-three point four per cent of the expected goals, eighth percentile, and 44.4 per cent of the shot attempts, ninth, across 1,009 minutes — with the goals 26 for and 55 against.

Twenty-six goals for in a thousand minutes is the lowest rate of any top-six forward in this edition.

Eight points in his last ten, 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.