Elias Pettersson's Underlying Statistics Show Concerning Reality

Vancouver Canucks forward Elias Pettersson has struggled this season, and to be fair, dating back to February 2024, and while it's easy to look at his goals and assists to notice that, his advanced statistics show his drop off in the last couple of years.

Tyson Cole of Canucks Army took at look at Elias Pettersson's underlying statistics for the 2024-25 campaign and compared them to 2022-23, where he registered 102 points, as well as last season.

Looking at the charts from NHL Edge, who provide a deeper look into advanced statistics for players around the league, the two most concerning areas where Elias Pettersson has dropped off is his top skating speed (mph) and his shooting percentage.

During the 2022-23 season, his breakout season in the National Hockey League, his average top skating speed was 23.31 mph, 1.26 mph faster than the NHL average, which had him in the 94th percentile.

Flash forward two seasons and his average top skating speed has dropped down to 21.59 mph, 0.53 mph below the league average and he was below the 50th percentile in the NHL in that category.

Moving on, Elias Pettersson had a shooting percentage of 15.2% during the 2022-23 season where had a career-high of 39 games in 80 games for the Canucks.

His shooting percentage that season had him in the 82nd percentile and was 3.3% higher than the National Hockey League average of 11.9%.

Two years later, Elias Pettersson's shooting percentage has dropped down to 12%, 0.6% below the league average and below the 50th percentile in the NHL.

There's still plenty of time for Elias Pettersson to turn things around this season, with 27 games left for the Canucks, and bump up these underlying numbers, but it's not a great seeing these statistics and the drop off that he's had, especially after landing such a big contract worth $11.6 million annually.

Everyone is hoping that Elias Pettersson can get back to the top of his game, he's a very important player for the Vancouver Canucks and when he's playing his best, the team is going to have success.

Source: Tyson Cole/Canucks Army
Canucks: Elias Pettersson's NHL Edge data shows some eyebrow-raising numbers