This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Elias Pettersson

Ten game-winners, and twelve penalty minutes in all 82 games.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2018-19	VAN	71	28	38	66	+3	12	10	0	7	144	19.4	18:14
2019-20	VAN	68	27	39	66	+16	18	8	0	5	162	16.7	18:32
2020-21	VAN	26	10	11	21	0	6	4	0	1	63	15.9	18:34
2021-22	VAN	80	32	36	68	+1	12	10	2	3	192	16.7	18:36
2022-23	VAN	80	39	63	102	+16	14	6	5	6	257	15.2	20:33
2023-24	VAN	82	34	55	89	+20	12	13	0	10	207	16.4	19:39
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	407	170	242	412	+56	74	51	7	32	1025	16.6	19:07

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

82 games, 34 goals and 55 assists for 89 points, 13 on the power play, 12 penalty minutes, 19:39 a night and plus-20, with 10 game-winners. He took 53.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,119 minutes, the 78th percentile, and his ice went 67-47 against an expectation of 48.70-42.49.

Eighteen goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and five more conceded than they called for. Ten game-winning goals is the most on the club and 89 points is the second-highest total of his career.

The Finesse Game

297 attempts at a median of 26 feet with 38 per cent of them from inside twenty and 20 per cent from beyond forty, 206 of those on goal, converted at 16.4 per cent against a career 16.59 across 1,025 shots.

170 career goals and 242 assists in 407 games. A career 16.59 per cent across a thousand shots is a shot that does not miss, and he takes it from anywhere between the dots; 32 career game-winners in 407 games is what a player with that release does with the last five minutes.

The Physical Game

He is 6-2 and 176 and took 12 penalty minutes in all 82 games.

Seventy-four career penalty minutes in 407 games. He is tall and very light and plays entirely away from contact; twelve minutes across a full season at nearly twenty a night is the cleanest line of any top-line centre in this chapter.

The Intangibles

Fifth overall in 2017 by Vancouver, six seasons, one organisation, and 412 points in 407 games.

A career plus-56 and 7 shorthanded goals in 407 games. He is 25, he has more points than games in his career, and he has scored 66 or more in five of his six seasons.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

disciplined· stays out of the box
0.15 penalty minutes a game over 82, 8th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“A career 16.59 per cent across a thousand shots is a shot that does not miss, and he takes it from anywhere between the dots; 32 career game-winners in 407 games is what a player with that release does with the last five minutes.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He is tall and very light and plays entirely away from contact; twelve minutes across a full season at nearly twenty a night is the cleanest line of any top-line centre in this chapter.”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“A career plus-56 and 7 shorthanded goals in 407 games.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,119 minutes

Expected goals: 53.4%; 79th pct
Shot attempts: 52.7%; 77th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 67 for, 47 against. Expected: 48.7 and 42.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

98th

Numbers

79th

The two rank him within 19 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.

Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 83 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.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2023-24 · 82 games

Top speed: 22.5 mph; 66th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.35 a game
Distance: 2.91 miles a game
Hardest shot: 97.7 mph; 98th pct

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 1119 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, 2023-24

The club: VAN took 52.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.4% — 0.8 above the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 1,119 minutes at five-on-five — 75th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Quinn Hughes	54.4%	52.5%	55.3%
Filip Hronek	49.5%	56.8%	52.3%
Ilya Mikheyev	54.2%	52.9%	54.2%

54.4% together, 52.5% for him apart and 55.3% for Hughes 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

297 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 33 of them goals. His median goal came from 15 feet. 38% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 20% from beyond forty.