Elias Pettersson’s first 10 games of 2026-27 have been his strongest opening stretch in a while, even if they still don’t come close to the wild peaks of his early NHL years.
Through 10 games, the Vancouver Canucks center has put up 10 points, with three goals and seven assists. That leads the team and leaves him tied for 24th in league scoring.
On an 84-game pace, that works out to 84 points and 25 goals. He’s also averaging 19:33 per night, his highest ice time since 2023-24, and he has already piled up 30 hits, nearly half of the 67 he delivered over the entire 2025-26 season.
So yes, it’s a solid start. In the context of what Pettersson has looked like lately, it’s even better than that. But compared with the best 10-game stretches of his career, it’s nowhere near the top.
The benchmark, as always, is that electric rookie arrival in 2018-19. Pettersson came into the league firing, scoring 10 goals and adding six assists for 16 points in his first 10 games. That remains one of the standard-setting starts of his career, and it came in as his second-best opening 10-game run overall.
His 2019-20 start was still strong, just not quite as explosive. He scored three goals and added enough assists to stay above a point per game through the opening 10, a continuation of the momentum he’d built as a rookie.
The first real dip came in 2020-21, a strange pandemic season that began in January. Pettersson again scored three goals, but he only added three assists for six points. That matched what became an injury-hit, shortened third NHL season that never really found its rhythm.
The slow trend continued in 2021-22, when Pettersson managed just one goal and four assists over his first 10 games. He sat at 0.5 points per game through that stretch, before eventually bouncing back to a career-high 68 points over the full season.
Then came the rebound in 2022-23, the year that became his best season to date. His first 10 games produced four goals, six assists and 10 points, a strong base that only looked modest once he surged all the way to 102 points by season’s end.
His greatest opening burst arrived in 2023-24. Pettersson had five goals and 14 assists for 19 points through 10 games, a blistering run that put him on a 42-goal pace and, even more strikingly, on a wild assist pace. The problem came later, when he managed just 70 points the rest of the way and the downturn began to take hold.
The slide was still there in 2024-25. That was the season things went sideways for the Canucks, and Pettersson’s early numbers reflected it. It was his worst start ever, and the source notes that the struggles carried on for most of the season even after JT Miller was traded.
Last season, in 2025-26, Pettersson showed a little life early with three goals and five assists for eight points over his first 10. That sparked some early comeback talk, but it didn’t last. He finished with just 15 goals and posted the lowest points-per-game rate of his career.
Against that backdrop, the current start stands out. Pettersson’s three goals and seven assists through 10 games put this opening stretch tied for fourth-best in his career. It’s also the fourth time he has opened with three goals in his first 10 games.
That doesn’t make this a full comeback story just yet. But it does show he’s moving in a better direction than he was a year ago. The peak Pettersson seasons may be in the rearview mirror for now, but this start at least points somewhere promising.
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