This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Drew Helleson
Anaheim Ducks Defense
A 40.4 per cent chance share — the 2nd percentile in the league — and a plus-6 to hide it.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-23 | ANA | 3 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 25.0 | 13:39 |
| 2024-25 | ANA | 56 | 4 | 9 | 13 | +6 | 47 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 63 | 6.3 | 16:21 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 59 | 5 | 9 | 14 | +6 | 49 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 67 | 7.5 | 16:13 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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
4 goals and 9 assists in 56 games for 13 points, plus-6, on 16:21 a night.
40.4 per cent at five-on-five, the 2nd percentile among all skaters in the league. His on-ice goals were 35-26 against an expected 24-38, which is 9 goals of goaltending turning the worst chance share on the roster into a positive rating. The plus-6 is a fiction.
The Finesse Game
Limited. 63 shots in 56 games with 75 per cent of them from beyond 40 feet, and a first pass that is functional rather than quick.
He is a right-shot defenceman who can move a puck out of his own end when nobody is pressuring him, and the margin between that and being pressured is where the season went.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 208, and willing. He is the one man on this blue line under 30 who will clear a crease, and 47 penalty minutes in 56 games is the cost of playing that way and of being beaten often enough to reach.
The frame is right for a defensive defenceman. The feet are the problem.
The Intangibles
A second-round pick, four years at Boston College, and a first real NHL season at 24 in an environment that would flatter nobody.
The honest projection is a third-pair right shot, and the club needs to be careful about the plus-6: it is the single clearest example in this edition of a rating that says the opposite of what happened.
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
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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-shot· beats a goaltender from range
4 of 68 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 5.9%, 97th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
“He is the one man on this blue line under 30 who will clear a crease”
“47 penalty minutes in 56 games is the cost of playing that way and of being beaten often enough to reach”
“He is a right-shot defenceman who can move a puck out of his own end when nobody is pressuring him, and the margin between that and being pressured is where the season went.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 798 minutes
- Expected goals
- 39.4%
- 2nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 43.5%
- 7th 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: 35 for, 26 against. Expected: 24.4 and 37.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 7 points of one another. 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.
Both bars are percentiles among the 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 63 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, 2024-25 · 56 games
- Top speed
- 22.2 mph
- 73rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.30 a game
- Distance
- 2.24 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 85.2 mph
- 19th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 89.7
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
2024-25 · 798 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, 2024-25
- The club
- ANA took 44.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 39.4% — 5.2 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 798 minutes at five-on-five — 36th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brian Dumoulin | 38.4% | 40.2% | 45.0% |
| Mason McTavish | 38.2% | 40.0% | 46.1% |
| Pavel Mintyukov | 40.0% | 39.2% | 43.9% |
38.4% together, 40.2% for him apart and 45.0% for Dumoulin apart. Dumoulin was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more 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
91 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 62 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 75% from beyond forty.