On the surface, the 2024/25 season was a disastrous one for Nils Höglander – even by 2024/25 Vancouver Canucks standards.

One year after breaking out into 24 goals and 36 points in 80 games and securing a three-year, $9 million extension, Höglander’s production came crashing back down to Earth. He’d finish the 2024/25 campaign with just eight goals and 25 points through 72 games, each being lower than he achieved in his rookie season a few years back (and that was only 56 games).

But if surface-level results were all we cared about, we wouldn’t be doing these deep-dive Years in Review.

And in Höglander’s case, there was at least a little more to the story than met the eye this year.

It’s tempting to remember this as a Tale of Two Seasons for Höglander, one in which he started out awful and then turned it around. But that’s not quite true.

Höglander notched an assist in the Canucks’ first game of the year, and his first goal the game after. By Game 5, he’d put up his third point. His fourth point came in Game 8, and if you think you’re sensing a slowdown here, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

The Swedish winger noticed his fifth point in Game 10 of the regular season on November 2, 2024…and it was very nearly his last point of the calendar year.

A devastating 21-game pointless streak ensued. No matter what, neither Höglander nor the team could get him going again. It was clear that this section of the season harmed both his own self-confidence and the confidence of the coaching staff in him, as his ice-time went from a season-high of 18:11 in one night to as low as 6:28 – and the occasional healthy scratch – during the slump.

It would not be until the cusp of the holidays, on December 23, that Höglander got another point. After that, they began to come a little more regularly again, though it should be noted that he didn’t score a goal until January 14, extending his goalless drought to an astonishing 34 games. From 24 goals in a season to a 34-game goalless drought is quite the turnaround, and not in a good way.

But if we were to break Höglander’s overall year down into two segments, we’d find his back-half to be not that shabby at all. From that December 23 slump-buster onward, Höglander notched six goals and 20 points in 41 games. Over a full season, that paces out to 40 points, which would be a new career-high for Höglander.

Now, obviously, this doesn’t have the most meaning. Most players’ stats look better when you cut out their worst streaks, and in this case, we’ve cut out a streak of epic proportions. But it does go to show that, at the very least, Höglander managed to turn his season back around in a positive direction after a truly awful first half.

In fact, through March and April – with the Canucks’ playoff hopes on the line – Höglander found another gear. He managed three goals and 12 points in 17 games through those two months, the point at which the Canucks needed him most.

That resuscitation has to count for something. Especially for a player like Höglander, who just hit 24 in the middle of 2024/25.

The 2023/24 campaign was Höglander’s first back in the NHL after spending most of 2022/23 in Abbotsford. It wasn’t his rookie year, but it was something resembling a rookie year, and so maybe we can consider the start of his 2024/25 season to be something resembling a sophomore slump.

So long as he’s on the other side of it, Höglander remains a valuable piece of the Canucks’ forward corps puzzle moving into the future.

We’ve already talked plenty about Höglander’s raw numbers, so we won’t get too much more into it here. The results are decidedly ‘meh,’ but not so meh as to call the entire season a write-off.

Get this: Höglander’s 25 points in 2024/25 were still tied for the 23^rd most among his draft class of 2019, which shows a bit of where his personal development curve fits in with his most direct peers.

One thing to definitely note is that Höglander’s ice time fell a full minute below his career average heading into this season. Clearly, some trust was lost with the coaches that needed to be regained over time.

Höglander’s underlying stats, however, give some genuine reason for optimism.

First and foremost, Höglander was on the ice for 36 goals for and only 26 against at 5-on-5, a fairly impressive result given his own offensive woes.

His 52.80% rate of expected goals ranked him fourth among Canucks who played 20 games or more, trailing only Quinn Hughes, Linus Karlsson, and Conor Garland. His control of high-danger chances of 53.54% trailed only Karlsson, placing Höglander at number one among those who spent the entire year in Vancouver. His possession game, so often visually apparent on the ice, remained as strong as ever.

Those are excellent results for anyone, and especially for a player who played all over the lineup throughout the season.

No one is going to call the 2024/25 campaign a successful one for Nils Höglander.

But it was, at the very least, a salvaged one. It was one that he prevented from becoming a total, potentially career-threatening disaster. And he managed to do so without ever finding a consistent spot in the lineup, or having the team around him get markedly better, or, if we’re being honest, without ever having fully gained the trust and confidence of head coach Rick Tocchet.

The coaching situation hasn’t changed much, with Tocchet’s assistant Adam Foote taking over the bench. But that’s alright, because Höglander has changed. The Höglander who went through a 34-game goalless drought in 2024/25 came out the other side of it as a better, more well-rounded, and more consistent player. He battled through it and came out of it stronger.

The 2025/26 season will be a different beast. The Canucks struggled as a whole from the jump last year, and that allowed Höglander’s personal struggles to fly under the radar a bit. That won’t be the case next year, especially not with Höglander’s $3 million AAV extension kicking in.

Only time will truly tell, but the way in which he turned around his 2024/25 results suggests that, barring another collapse, he’s at the very least capable of being worth that money – and maybe more.