Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

40

Elias Pettersson

Vancouver Canucks Center

45 points in 64 games, two years after 102, in the first season of an eight-year contract.

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
2025-26 so far
Career471185272457+468858733113416.319:03

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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 30 assists in 64 games — 45 points at 18:40 a night, minus-10, with 7 power-play goals on 109 shots. He missed eighteen games.

Two seasons earlier he had 102 points. The season before this one he had 89. Forty-five in 64 games is a rate that would not have got him a top-six job anywhere, and it came in the first year of an eight-year contract signed off the back of the 102.

The Finesse Game

109 shots in 64 games is the number that describes the season. He has taken more than 200 in three separate years. A player who shoots this little is either hurt or has stopped believing the shot will go in, and both explanations were offered.

The hands and the vision have not gone — 30 assists in 64 games is a point-per-two-games rate as a distributor — and he still handles the puck at speed as well as anybody on this roster. What disappeared is the willingness to use any of it.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 176 pounds and among the lightest forwards in the league at that height. He does not win pucks on the wall, he does not forecheck with force, and he never has.

14 penalty minutes in 64 games. He is entirely out of the physical half of the game, and on a club that spent the season being outchanced that made him easy to play against.

The Intangibles

Fifth overall in 2017, a Calder Trophy in 2019, and 471 games and 457 points.

He is 26. The season was played through a public dispute with the club’s other best forward that ended with the other man traded in January, and through an injury he played most of the year with. There is no reading of the last two years that is simple.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 899 minutes

Expected goals
49.4%
45th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
48.3%
35th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 27 for, 30 against. Expected: 29.3 and 29.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
60th
Numbers
45th

The two rank him within 15 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 74 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 899 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, 2024-25

The club
VAN took 49.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.4% — 0.3 above the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 899 minutes at five-on-five — 45th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Jake DeBrusk43.3%58.8%51.6%
Quinn Hughes51.8%47.9%53.9%
Tyler Myers45.3%51.9%50.7%

43.3% together, 58.8% for him apart and 51.6% for DeBrusk apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.

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

182 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 16 of them goals. His median goal came from 23 feet. 37% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.