Darren Helm
Colorado Avalanche Center
The 2nd-lowest giveaway rate of the 393 qualified forwards, at 10:33 a night in a fifteenth season.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007-08 | DET | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 0.0 | 7:00 |
| 2008-09 | DET | 16 | 0 | 1 | 1 | -7 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 29 | 0.0 | 12:26 |
| 2009-10 | DET | 75 | 11 | 13 | 24 | -2 | 18 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 165 | 6.7 | 14:30 |
| 2010-11 | DET | 82 | 12 | 20 | 32 | +9 | 16 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 177 | 6.8 | 13:18 |
| 2011-12 | DET | 68 | 9 | 17 | 26 | +5 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 124 | 7.3 | 14:31 |
| 2012-13 | DET | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 12:27 |
| 2013-14 | DET | 42 | 12 | 8 | 20 | +2 | 14 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 83 | 14.5 | 15:10 |
| 2014-15 | DET | 75 | 15 | 18 | 33 | +7 | 12 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 160 | 9.4 | 15:50 |
| 2015-16 | DET | 77 | 13 | 13 | 26 | -2 | 32 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 165 | 7.9 | 15:04 |
| 2016-17 | DET | 50 | 8 | 9 | 17 | -6 | 20 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 98 | 8.2 | 15:22 |
| 2017-18 | DET | 75 | 13 | 18 | 31 | +3 | 39 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 141 | 9.2 | 15:34 |
| 2018-19 | DET | 61 | 7 | 10 | 17 | -11 | 20 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 107 | 6.5 | 14:34 |
| 2019-20 | DET | 68 | 9 | 7 | 16 | -6 | 37 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 102 | 8.8 | 13:44 |
| 2020-21 | DET | 47 | 3 | 5 | 8 | -3 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 83 | 3.6 | 14:41 |
| 2021-22 | COL | 68 | 7 | 8 | 15 | -5 | 14 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 93 | 7.5 | 10:33 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 812 | 119 | 147 | 266 | -18 | 252 | 6 | 14 | 16 | 1535 | 7.8 | 14:15 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 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
7 goals and 8 assists in 68 games — 15 points at 10:33 a night, minus-5, with 14 penalty minutes. Colorado won the Stanley Cup.
46.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 602 minutes, the 23rd percentile among forwards. His ice went 16-26 against an expectation of 20.11-22.86.
10:33 a night is the 4th percentile in ice time among the 393 qualified forwards.
The Finesse Game
0.59 giveaways per 60 is the 2nd-lowest of the 393 qualified forwards. Only Justin Danforth turned the puck over less often, and it comes with 2.09 takeaways at the 79th percentile — he wins pucks and never gives them back.
7.78 shots per 60 is the 59th percentile at 7.5 per cent, the 16th. Seven goals on 93 attempts.
84.3 mph is the 13th percentile among forwards. No shot; a stick and a forecheck.
The Physical Game
6-0 and 192. 9.53 hits per 60 is the 87th percentile among forwards and 2.26 blocks is the 77th, at ten and a half minutes a night.
1:55 a night shorthanded is the 90th percentile among forwards. Six minutes of the ten and a half were on special teams or in his own end.
22.2 mph is the 36th percentile at 35 — the speed that made his name is measurably gone, and the work is not.
The Intangibles
One hundred and thirty-second overall in 2005 by Detroit, fifth round, and 812 NHL games at 35 with 266 points, and a Stanley Cup at thirty-five, fifteen years after his first NHL game.
With Cale Makar on the ice Colorado took 55.7 per cent of the chances and Helm without him was at 43.7, across 274 attempts — which is a small sample of a fourth-liner being handed the best defenceman in the league for a shift. He is 35, and Colorado has four bottom-six jobs to fill.
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
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
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.
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
36% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 9th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“he wins pucks and never gives them back”
“1:55 a night shorthanded is the 90th percentile among forwards.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 602 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.8%
- 29th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.5%
- 50th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 16 for, 26 against. Expected: 20.1 and 22.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 29 points above where the numbers do. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 62 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, 2021-22 · 68 games
- Top speed
- 22.2 mph
- 54th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.21 a game
- Distance
- 1.68 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 84.3 mph
- 36th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.1
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.
Usual linemates
2021-22 · 602 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, 2021-22
- The club
- COL took 51.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.8% — 5.1 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 602 minutes at five-on-five — 25th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Erik Johnson | 43.6% | 48.9% | 52.3% |
| Jack Johnson | 37.9% | 51.3% | 48.3% |
| Logan O'Connor | 51.1% | 44.7% | 47.6% |
43.6% together, 48.9% for him apart and 52.3% for Johnson apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.
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
107 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 37% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 25% from beyond forty.