February is a little early to get started on any “Year in Review”-type articles, but occasionally it is possible to jump the queue a little bit.

Jonathan Lekkerimäki’s 2025-26 campaign is over. It was reported this weekend that Lekkerimäki will undergo shoulder surgery that will keep him out of action until sometime in the summer. With the Abbotsford Canucks in last place in their division and as out of the AHL playoff race as it gets, this is a season-ender for Lekkerimäki.

So, with 2025-26 in the books for Lekkerimäki as an individual, how did this season go for him? And, as is probably most important when discussing a prospect, did this season move Lekkerimäki closer to or further from becoming a full-time NHL player for the Vancouver Canucks?

It’s actually a tricky question to answer.

The injuries are an obvious point of frustration, and with Lekkerimäki still a bit undersized at a slight 5’11”, they were always going to be a concern. This is not Lekkerimäki’s first brush with late-season absences. He missed the last month of his draft year with mono. He missed most of the latter half of his Draft+1 regular season in 2022-23 with Djurgardens due to a foot injury, but returned for a playoff run.

Lekkerimäki stayed relatively healthy in 2023-24, playing the bulk of the season for Orebro of the SHL before making his AHL debut with Abbotsford toward the tail-end of the year. He spent all of 2024-25 in North America, splitting his time between Vancouver and Abbotsford, but suffered a few random injuries along the way. He crashed headfirst into the boards and missed time at one point, and then suffered what turned out to be a wisdom tooth infection as the playoffs approached, resulting in him wearing a bubble cage and coming in and out of the lineup.

That brings us to the current 2025-26 season, in which Lekkerimäki made the team out of camp, but was then injured in an October 19 matchup with the Washington Capitals. This injury was undisclosed, but there are whispers that this was the start of the shoulder troubles that would eventually require surgery. After a brief call-up in late November, Lekkerimäki missed a couple weeks of AHL action in December with another injury – or possibly a recurrence of the same one – and then returned to play up until this decision to end his season.

That is an awful lot of injuries for someone who amounts to a sophomore pro. That’s led to plenty of talk about Lekkerimäki being “injury prone.” But that said, it’s tough to look at the actual injury history and point out any sort of trend. From mono to a foot injury to infected teeth to a shoulder problem; there’s no real pattern there.

With Lekkerimäki’s size, his durability was always going to be a concern. But from the list, only this most recent shoulder injury could really be attributed to any lack of strength. And, of course, Lekkerimäki was always going to have to get stronger to survive the professional game. But it sure sounds as though Lekkerimäki was injured early on this season and then continued to play through it, up to the point that the season was a write-off and the timing became right for surgery. Surely, one shoulder injury does not equate with someone being injury prone.

Then there’s the matter of what Lekkerimäki accomplished while supposedly suffering through a nagging shoulder problem, possibly from October onward.

Lekkerimäki’s NHL numbers remain pedestrian. Last year, he got three goals and three assists in his first 24 NHL games. This year, he got two goals and one assist in 13 games – nothing to write home about, and essentially exactly the same scoring pace.

Then again, a lack of production in Vancouver can’t be laid down on any one individual, and certainly not one who still qualified as an NHL rookie this season. Nobody was scoring in Vancouver, and much of Lekkerimäki’s limited time with the team this year came when the team was decidedly short on centres to pair Lekkerimäki with.

It would have been hard for Lekkerimäki to put up any quality stats in Vancouver, is what we’re saying.

But then, Lekkerimäki also had an excuse to not put up the greatest of numbers with Abbotsford, too. The Abbotsford Canucks have been, to this point, the second-lowest-scoring team in the AHL, ahead of just the Iowa Wild. With that in mind, Lekkerimäki could be forgiven if his own production slipped from where it was on the championship 2024-25 Abbotsford roster to now. But it did not. Much the opposite, in fact.

Lekkerimäki’s 2024-25 AHL numbers, when healthy, were dazzling. He ended up with 19 goals and 28 points in 36 regular season games, which was good for the eighth-best goal-per-game rate in the entire league, and the best by an under-23 player.

As we said, a bit of a slump for 2025-26 would have been understandable. It happened for virtually every other Abbotsford Canuck. But not Lekkerimäki. He ends his 2025-26 AHL regular season with 13 goals and 20 points in 21 games. That’s a much higher point-per-game rate than he achieved last year, and it’s an even higher goals-per-game rate.

How much higher?

Lekkerimäki’s 13 goals in 21 games is a 0.619 goals-per-game rate. That’s the fourth highest in the entire AHL. It’s something that would pace out to a 51-goal season across a full 82-game schedule.

Goal-scoring is, at the end of the day, Lekkerimäki’s primary purpose. He was not drafted as a play-driver. He was not drafted as a line-leader. He was drafted as a sniper, and as a finisher, and that will always be his specialty.

Such players are perhaps more vulnerable to the ups and downs of the team around them. After all, you can’t be much of a finisher if there aren’t plays being made to finish. That’s what makes the fact that Lekkerimäki has somehow increased his goal-scoring within this season so impressive. Pick another member of last year’s Abbotsford team, and you will find that they are either playing elsewhere or have had their production dip for 2025-26. But not Lekkerimäki. Despite the lack of complementary play for this supposedly complementary player, Lekkerimäki is still finding ways to score more than ever before. Or was, as it were.

One must keep in mind that Lekkerimäki has been 21 years old this entire season, and will be until his birthday in June. That’s an exceptionally young age to be scoring like this in a pro league. One must also keep in mind that Lekkerimäki was doing all this while supposedly nursing an ongoing shoulder issue. That’s an ailment that should obviously impact shooting, but Lekkerimäki still shot the lights out.

Any such optimism must be couched in reality. Just 21 games on a season is a small sample size, and even if we combine it with his last year’s totals, Lekkerimäki has played just 73 games, regular and playoffs, at the AHL level. That’s not even a full season. And, again, until he can show more of this at the NHL level, too, it’s all a bit moot.

But the odds of Lekkerimäki getting to that point probably got higher, not lower, in 2025-26, despite the unfortunate ending. Ultimately, Lekkerimäki’s job in the NHL will be to snipe. To sit on some talented centres wings and turn their brilliant plays into efficient goals. All he did in 2025-26 was prove himself as one of the best at that in the top developmental league in the world, and that makes it all the more likely he can transfer those same skills up a level, perhaps as soon as next year.

This shoulder surgery may be a blessing in disguise. There weren’t going to be any playoffs for Lekkerimäki, regardless. Now he can have his surgery, work through his recovery, and ideally get back into the gym at least a month ahead of September’s training camp. With the shoulder fixed up, Lekkerimäki can focus on adding some strength and durability to his frame, and should come into camp well-prepared to take another step.

We say another step, because that’s what 2025-26 still has to be looked at, all things considered. Lekkerimäki continued to round out his game, according to coaches and pundits. But more importantly, he continued to get better at the things he is best at, and those are the things that will move him closer to being a full-time Vancouver Canuck in the end.