Here’s a neat thing about that headline you just read. Whether you want to read the “100” portion as “100 points” or as “100 percent,” they both mean essentially the same thing for Elias Pettersson.

There is no doubt that Pettersson has bounced back to some extent in this 2025-26 season. With 13 goals and 34 points through 49 games thus far, Pettersson is producing at almost exactly the same rate as he did last year. That said, he’s doing so on a much more anemic roster, while carrying an exceptionally difficult defensive load – and carrying it quite well, all things considered.

But there is a difference between bouncing back a little and being all the way bounced back, especially when it comes to Pettersson. This is a player, after all, who used to be electric. This is a player who used to drive play in every sense of the word. This is a player who topped out at 39 goals and 102 points as recently as the 2022-23 season.

For Pettersson to truly make a comeback to his former self, he’d have to start putting more points on the board, plain and simple. But how likely is that to happen after what will be his third off-year in a row, a year in which he is not going to even approach the century mark? How likely is it that Pettersson might ever get back to 100-point status?

We want a specific answer here, and so we’re going to have to ask a specific question. And it goes like this. Pettersson scored 100 points three seasons ago, and has suffered a continuous three-season dip since then. Has anyone ever done that, and then got back to 100 points at some point thereafter. Or, worded out like an actual scientific inquiry:

The short answer to that question is ‘yes,’ but the medium answer is ‘yes, but with a whole lot of caveats and only a few actually legitimate examples.’ The long answer is the rest of this article, in which we go over everything to have ever accomplished this niche achievement in NHL history (in chronological order).

Gap Between 100-point Seasons: Three seasons
The Gap: 109 points in 1971-72, 105 points in 1975-76
The Context: The first entry on our list is the man known as Gentleman Jean Ratelle, and he’s also one of our only truly authentic examples. Ratelle scored 1267 points across 1281 games in his NHL career, but only crossed the 100-point threshold twice. The first was the 1971-72 season, where Ratelle became the seventh player in league history to pass the century mark. He remained at or above a point-per-game for the three seasons in between, but didn’t hit 100 again until 1975-76, the same season he was traded to the Boston Bruins. Ratelle notched 15 points with the Rangers before the trade, and then 90 in 67 games with the Bruins thereafter.

A key difference between Ratelle and Pettersson is that Ratelle’s three seasons in between his 100-pointers were all still relatively excellent.

Gap Between 100-point Seasons: Four seasons
The Gap: 106 points in 1981-82, 103 points in 1986-87
The Context: Our second example is also a Hall of Fame player, and also one of our few legitimate examples of what we’re looking for. Like Pettersson, Ciccarelli got a real hot start to his career, scoring 106 points in 1981-82 as an NHL sophomore. It took him five years to get back to that total with 103 points in 1986-87, still with the Minnesota North Stars.

Ciccarelli is a bit more like Pettersson in that his point totals were really all over the board. In the four seasons in between 100-point years, he put up 75, 71, 32, and 89-point seasons. His ‘bounce back’ came in his seventh NHL season. If any example gives us hope for Pettersson, it’s this one.

Even better, Ciccarelli almost bounced back to 100 points a second time, way down the road in 1992-93 where he got 97 points for the Detroit Red Wings after another five-season gap.

Gap Between 100-point Seasons: Three seasons
The Gap: 100 points in 1984-85, 150 points in 1988-89
The Context: We now reach the portion of our list where a lot of our examples technically qualify, but less so once we apply context. And Nicholls is probably the clearest example of that. Nicholls peaked in his fourth NHL season with 100 points in 1984-85, kept it at 97 points for the season thereafter, and then started to fall off.

Then his Los Angeles Kings traded for Wayne Gretzky, and Nicholls got put on his line. Out of nowhere, Nicholls broke through his career ceiling with a 150-point campaign. Of course, the next season, Nicholls himself was traded to the New York Rangers, and he never even broke 80 points again. This was, for all intents and purposes, a purely Gretzky-induced comeback. So, unless Connor McDavid shows up in Vancouver, this doesn’t really compare much to Pettersson’s situation.

Gap Between 100-point Seasons: Five seasons
The Gap: 105 points in 1986-87, 127 points in 1992-93
The Context: This is probably our most comparable example, and it is yet another HHOFer. Gilmour really broke out in his fourth NHL season with the St. Louis Blues, going from 53 points in 74 games the prior season to 105 points in 80 games for 1986-87. He dipped for a year, and then was traded to Calgary, but never achieved similar numbers while there.

Midway through the 1991-92 season, Gilmour was traded to Toronto. In his first full season with the Leafs the year after, he had a career-high 127 points in 83 games. Even better, he followed that up with 111 points the following year before his production fell off again, and this time for good.

Minus the multiple trades, this would be a pretty favourable outcome to the Pettersson situation.

Gap Between 100-point Seasons: Four seasons (but only three NHL seasons)
The Gap: 121 points in 2000-01, 123 points in 2005-06
The Context: Here we get back into the examples that require additional context, though this one is still somewhat legitimate. Jagr put up his fourth 100-point campaign for the Penguins in 2000-01 before being traded to the Washington Capitals, where he slumped – by his own lofty standards – for two-and-a-half seasons. A trade in 2003-04 to New York seemed to spark Jagr again, but then the lockout wiped out the 2004-05 season, and so Jagr played in Czechia and Russia for the duration.

When he and the NHL returned in 2005-06, Jagr posted his last 100-point season with 123 in 82 games. Many credit the lockout, and the time spent overseas, with rejuvenating Jagr’s game. He seemed to agree, because after three more seasons in the NHL, he went to the KHL for three more before returning to the NHL in 2011.

In reality, no other NHL player in history compares to the uniqueness of Jagr’s career. But he did go three seasons in between 100-point seasons without any major injuries of note before that lockout, and that’s more than we can say about most of the rest of the list.

Gap Between 100-point Seasons: Four seasons, and then four more seasons
The Gap: 120 points in 1995-96, 118 points in 2000-01, and 100 points in 2006-07
The Context: Sakic aged like a fine wine. While he was one of the more consistent NHLers of all-time, and played well above a point-per-game pace for the vast majority of his seasons, Sakic only hit the century mark six times, and experienced some notable gaps in between.

Sakic hit 120 points, and won the Stanley Cup, in 1995-96, the first year of the Colorado Avalanche’s existence. He hit it again, and won another Cup, in 2000-01, four seasons later. Then, four seasons after that (with one of them being a lockout season), at the age of 37, Sakic hit 100 points exactly for the final time in the 2006-07 season.

This is really just a case of a true superstar who occasionally elevated his game even further above his already-great baseline on a few occasions, however, and doesn’t truly compare at all to what Pettersson has been working through.

Gap Between 100-point Seasons: Six seasons
The Gap: 116 points in 1995-96, 106 points in 2002-03
The Context: Those that know the name will know the context immediately. Forsberg was one of the greatest talents to ever play the game, but his career was absolutely besieged by various injuries. He only ever hit 100 points twice, six full seasons apart, but that was a result of those two seasons being two of his only relatively healthy ones. Forsberg put up 116 points in 1995-96 as an NHL sophomore (and won the Stanley Cup). He hit 90 points twice in the interim, but did not hit the century mark again until 2002-03, where he got 106 points a year after missing the entire regular season.

Pettersson has had injuries of his own, but they pale in comparison to what Forsberg endured over the years. The two situations really aren’t comparable as a result, especially since Forsberg was regularly putting up 20+-point playoff runs during his interim.

Gap Between 100-point Seasons: Three seasons, and then four more seasons
The Gap: 109 points in 2009-10, 104 points in 2013-14, and 100 points in 2018-19
The Context: The legendary Crosby technically applies for our list, but only technically. He experienced a three-season gap after his fourth 100-point campaign (in his fifth NHL season) in 2009-10, but that’s because he was limited to just 41, 22, and 36 games in those seasons due to a combination of injury and lockout. As soon as he got back to playing a full season in 2013-14, Crosby hit 100 points again.

He stayed healthy, but his point totals did dip in the four seasons thereafter – still over a PPG, but not at that 100-point pace. But he would hit it again, four years later with 100 points exactly in 2018-19. Crosby has stayed productive since, posting over 90 points on three more occasions, but he has yet to hit 100 again.

Gap Between 100-point Seasons: Three seasons
The Gap: 128 points in 2018-19, 113 points in 2022-23
The Context: Kucherov’s story is similar to Crosby, except it’s injuries and a pandemic instead of injuries and a lockout. Kucherov scored 128 points in 2018-19, winning the Hart Trophy, but then began a run of regular season-only injuries. He only played 68 games the following year, and then had his entire 2020-21 regular season wiped out by the late COVID start and injuries. He returned for just 47 games in 2021-22, but was back for all 82 games of 2022-23, and 113 points followed. Kucherov has kept bouncing back since then, achieving a career-high of 144 points. He got 121 points the year after, and is on pace for something well over 100 again this year.

The Kucherov example does not compare very well to Pettersson at all. Injuries are the sole culprit here, and Kucherov’s points-per-game have remained stellar, as have his playoff performances.