Danton Heinen

612 games of being quietly useful, and the 95th percentile.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2016-17	BOS	8	0	0	0	-3	2	0	0	0	7	0.0	13:14
2017-18	BOS	77	16	31	47	+10	16	2	1	4	135	11.8	15:01
2018-19	BOS	77	11	23	34	+13	16	1	0	2	114	9.7	13:58
2019-20	BOS/ANA	67	10	16	26	-2	10	3	0	2	109	9.2	14:28
2020-21	ANA	43	7	7	14	-9	0	1	0	1	76	9.2	14:46
2021-22	PIT	76	18	15	33	+6	16	3	0	1	138	13.0	12:43
2022-23	PIT	65	8	14	22	-5	12	1	0	0	96	8.3	10:45
2023-24	BOS	74	17	19	36	+16	28	1	1	4	119	14.3	14:28
2024-25	VAN/PIT	79	9	20	29	+2	31	1	1	0	81	11.1	13:27
2025-26	PIT/CBJ	46	6	6	12	+7	16	0	0	0	44	13.6	11:21
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	612	102	151	253	+35	147	13	3	14	919	11.1	13:30

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

6 goals and 6 assists in 46 games — 12 points, plus-7, at 11:21 a night. His 5-on-5 work was done in Pittsburgh.

The Finesse Game

Modest and well placed. 71 unblocked attempts with 49 per cent from inside 20 feet, median 22, and 6 goals. He goes to the right ice and does not shoot much.

102 goals and 151 assists in 612 games is a career of being the fourth-best forward on a line.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 187, which is light, and he plays a positional rather than physical game. 16 penalty minutes in 46 games.

The Intangibles

58.6 per cent of the expected goals — 95th percentile — in 504 minutes, with the expected goals 20.5 to 14.4 in his favour.

That is a genuinely excellent rate and it comes with the usual warning: 500 minutes on a good team is the easiest way to produce one. They were not sheltered minutes, though — 40.0 per cent of his five-on-five shifts started in the attacking zone, the 13th percentile — so the sample is the caveat and the deployment is not. The goals themselves went 21-15 his way.

He is 31, a fourth-round pick, and has spent a decade being the player clubs sign when they need somebody who does not make mistakes. 5 points in his last 10. On a Columbus fourth line that was badly outplayed, that has real value.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
58.6% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 50.9% for his club in the minutes he sat: +7.7, 98th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 504 minutes

Expected goals: 58.6%; 98th pct
Shot attempts: 53.5%; 84th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 21 for, 15 against. Expected: 20.5 and 14.4.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

23rd

Numbers

98th

The numbers rank him 75 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 67 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2025-26 · 46 games

Top speed: 21.4 mph; 17th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.78 a game
Distance: 1.90 miles a game
Hardest shot: 84.1 mph; 45th pct

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 2 goals, 3 assists, 10 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 366 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2025-26

The club: CBJ took 51.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 58.6% — 7.0 above the club he did it on.
The role: 504 minutes at five-on-five — 17th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Boone Jenner	56.9%	59.4%	50.6%
Ivan Provorov	60.5%	57.8%	50.4%
Zach Werenski	63.8%	56.7%	54.3%

56.9% together, 59.4% for him apart and 50.6% for Jenner apart. Jenner was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Jenner than for him.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

71 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 49% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 15% from beyond forty.