Jonathan Lekkerimäki: Canucks Winger, Stats and Contract

Jonathan Lekkerimäki of the Vancouver Canucks

Jonathan Lekkerimaki is a Swedish right winger for the Vancouver Canucks, drafted 15th overall in 2022 and named the Most Valuable Player of the 2024 World Junior Championship. He is often written without the diacritics, as Jonathan Lekkerimaki, and both spellings point to the same player. Before he reached Vancouver, he was the SHL Rookie of the Year and the scoring leader of a World Under-18 Championship that Sweden won.

Fast facts: Jonathan Lekkerimäki
Current team	Vancouver Canucks, NHL
Shirt number	88
Position	Right wing
Shoots	Right
Born	24 July 2004, Tullinge, Sweden
Height / weight	5’11” (180 cm), 172 lbs (78 kg), per the NHL register and the Canucks’ own roster
Drafted	2022, first round, 15th overall, Vancouver Canucks
Contract status	Three-year entry-level deal signed 6 May 2023, $918,333 cap hit, expiring after 2026-27
Previous clubs	Abbotsford Canucks, Örebro HK, Djurgårdens IF

Jonathan Lekkerimäki’s path through the Canucks system

Long, and deliberately so. Vancouver drafted him in 2022 and left him in Sweden for a year, then gave him two seasons split between the NHL and the AHL before he arrived to stay. He played 24 NHL games in 2024-25 and 13 in 2025-26, with 36 and 21 AHL games for Abbotsford.

He has said the difference is familiarity, not anything new in his game. “It’s a good start for myself, but I feel like it comes from being more used to Manny’s system,” he told the Canucks’ own site, referring to head coach Manny Malhotra. In the same interview, he added: “I know how he wants me to play and what he expects out of me, so because of that, I can stick to my game.”

The stated ambition is narrow. “I want to be a threat out there. I had a good summer, so yeah, I just want to stick with it.”

What changed between the two spells was not the shot. He stopped thinking about it. “I feel good mentally and physically,” he said. “There’s not too much to think about; just go.” He now plays on the Canucks’ first power-play unit, where most of a shooter’s value comes from.

Jonathan Lekkerimäki’s career stats

Season	Team	League	GP	G	A	P	PIM
2021-22	Djurgårdens IF	SHL	26	7	2	9	0
2021-22	Djurgårdens IF J20	J20 Nationell	26	20	15	35	8
2022-23	Djurgårdens IF	HockeyAllsvenskan	29	3	6	9	4
2023-24	Örebro HK	SHL	46	19	12	31	10
2023-24	Abbotsford Canucks	AHL	6	1	1	2	0
2024-25	Vancouver Canucks	NHL	24	3	3	6	2
2024-25	Abbotsford Canucks	AHL	36	19	9	28	0
2025-26	Vancouver Canucks	NHL	13	2	1	3	0
2025-26	Abbotsford Canucks	AHL	21	13	7	20	8

Completed seasons. Djurgården were in the second tier in 2022-23, which is why that row reads HockeyAllsvenskan rather than SHL, and his playoff that spring was far better than his regular season: 15 points in 15 games. He also won the Calder Cup with Abbotsford in 2025, scoring twice in the deciding stretch of the final.

Lekkerimäki scored 19 goals in 46 SHL games for Örebro and 32 in 57 AHL games for Abbotsford, up from 0.41 goals per game to 0.56. The leagues are different, and the sample is small, but the direction has been the same at every level he has been asked to repeat.

The scouting report on Jonathan Lekkerimäki

The shot, and then everything else. He is not big at 5’11” and 172 pounds, and the knock on him through the draft year and after it was physical rather than technical.

Mikael Samuelsson, who works in player development for Vancouver, put the gap plainly to NHL.com: “From the development side, I think he has steps to go in the physical game.” In the same conversation, he was unconcerned about the attitude: “I know this, he’s up to the challenge.”

Lekkerimäki’s own description of what works is about tempo rather than strength. “Play with confidence and just have fun out there. Play fast. Play with pace,” he said.

The case for him has always been the release rather than the volume. He is a one-timer shooter who is most dangerous when somebody else has already moved the defense, which is why the power play suits him and why the AHL numbers arrived before the NHL ones did.

Jonathan Lekkerimäki at the World Junior Championship

Three tournaments, and the last one was his. Sweden took silver in 2024, and he was named the most valuable player of the tournament by the IIHF, as well as a forward on the media all-star team alongside Cutter Gauthier and Jiri Kulich. He scored seven goals in seven games.

The two before that were quieter: bronze in the tournament played in August 2022, with three assists, and a fourth-place finish in 2023 after Sweden lost the bronze match 8-7 in overtime to the United States.

His best junior tournament was actually the one below. At the 2022 World Under-18 Championship, Sweden won gold, and Lekkerimäki led the whole tournament in scoring with 15 points in six games.

Jonathan Lekkerimäki’s draft year

Vancouver took him 15th overall in the first round of the 2022 draft in Montreal. He was 17, listed then at 5’10” and 171 pounds, and he had spent the season split between Djurgården’s junior side and their SHL team.

The season that got him there was the under-18 gold. He had 35 points in 26 junior games and nine in 26 SHL games as a 17-year-old, which is the harder of the two numbers.

The year after the draft, he moved to Örebro and was named SHL Rookie of the Year for 2023-24, with 31 points in 46 games, the most of any Örebro player that season.

Jonathan Lekkerimäki’s contract

Three years, signed on 6 May 2023, at a cap hit of $918,333. It runs through the 2026-27 season, after which he becomes a restricted free agent.

The arithmetic looks odd until you know about entry-level slide. He signed in 2023 but played that season in the SHL, so the deal did not start counting until 2024-25. A three-year contract from 2023 therefore expires in 2027.