Elias Pettersson

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 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

39 goals and 63 assists in 80 games — 102 points — at 20:33 a night. Plus-16, 257 shots at 15.2 per cent, six on the power play, five shorthanded, six game-winners, 14 penalty minutes.

102 points is a career high by 34, and 39 goals a career high by seven, in his fifth season.

53 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 1,120 minutes, the 71st percentile, with his ice at 65-53 against an expectation of 48.76-43.20 — sixteen more goals than the chances called for at the good end and ten more at the other.

He started 53.2 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 65th percentile.

Five shorthanded goals, matched on this roster only by J.T. Miller’s five, which on a club that finished twenty-third on the penalty kill says something about the two of them rather than about the unit.

The Finesse Game

257 shots at a median of 28 feet, and 373 tracked attempts.

Inside twenty feet: 95 shots on goal and 23 goals — 24.21 per cent, against a league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 116 shots and 15 goals, 12.93 against a league rate of 11.05. Beyond forty: 47 shots and three goals, 6.38, above the league rate of 4.16.

Above the positional rate at all three distances, on two hundred and fifty-eight shots on goal. That is the shot chart of a man who is simply a better finisher than the league, and the career record agrees: a 16.6 per cent shooting percentage across 325 games and 818 shots, which is an extraordinary rate to hold for five seasons.

So the 15.2 last season was, if anything, slightly below his own standard. There is no correction waiting here.

79 slap shots out of 373 attempts is a 21.2 per cent share, which is unusually high for a centre, and his shot is measured at 95.8 mph, the 82nd percentile.

34 tip-ins and 31 backhands say the rest of it: he scores from everywhere, in every way, and the release is quick enough that goaltenders do not get set.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 176 pounds, which is exceptionally light for a first-line centre, with 14 penalty minutes in 80 games and 62 in 325 career games.

A top speed of 23.3 mph, the 93rd percentile, 1.9 bursts above twenty a game at the 84th, and 3.08 miles a game at the 84th. Fast, often, and covering a great deal of ground — one of the better all-round tracking lines in this book.

He is not physical and at 176 pounds cannot be, and the standing question about him has always been what happens in a playoff series against men who are allowed to lean on him.

He defends with his stick and his reading of the play, which is where the five shorthanded goals come from and why a club that was bad everywhere else was not bad with him on the ice.

14 penalty minutes in 80 games is the second-lowest total of any forward on this roster who played a full season, behind Andrei Kuzmenko’s eight.

The Intangibles

Fifth overall in 2017, five seasons, 325 games, 323 points, all of them here.

136 goals and 187 assists at a career 16.6 per cent, and a plus-36 on a club that has been below .500 for most of it.

He is twenty-four, and the best player on the team by a distance.

What the file describes is a genuine first-line centre with an elite finishing rate, a 93rd-percentile top speed and a hundred and seventy-six pounds on him. The first three of those are settled. The fourth is the whole of the argument about him.