This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Samuel Girard
Colorado Avalanche Defense
Five foot ten and 170 pounds at 21:39 a night, on the club that took 51.9 per cent of the chances — and 49.1 per cent of them himself.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | NSH/COL | 73 | 4 | 19 | 23 | -11 | 8 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 84 | 4.8 | 17:39 |
| 2018-19 | COL | 82 | 4 | 23 | 27 | +8 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 116 | 3.5 | 19:54 |
| 2019-20 | COL | 70 | 4 | 30 | 34 | +1 | 17 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 96 | 4.2 | 21:19 |
| 2020-21 | COL | 48 | 5 | 27 | 32 | +15 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 79 | 6.3 | 23:13 |
| 2021-22 | COL | 67 | 5 | 23 | 28 | -4 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 79 | 6.3 | 21:39 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 340 | 22 | 122 | 144 | +9 | 67 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 454 | 4.9 | 20:31 |
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
5 goals and 23 assists in 67 games — 28 points at 21:39 a night, minus-4, with 20 penalty minutes.
49.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,264 minutes, the 45th percentile among defencemen. His ice went 60-59 against an expectation of 49.6-51.32 — ten more goals for than the chances promised and eight more against.
Colorado took 51.9 per cent of the chances as a club and finished 2nd in the league with 119 points. He is the only defenceman here who played more than 1,000 minutes and came in under fifty.
The Finesse Game
3.27 shots per 60 is the 19th percentile among defencemen and 6 per cent of them came from the slot, the 9th, on a median distance of 54 feet at the 88th. He does not shoot and does not pretend to.
1:50 a night on the power play is the 76th percentile among defencemen and 25 per cent of his points came there. 1.16 giveaways per 60 is the 12th percentile — the puck management is genuinely tidy.
0.98 even-strength points per 60 is the 55th percentile. For a 5-10 offensive defenceman playing twenty-two minutes on a championship team, that is the number that does not add up.
The Physical Game
5-10 and 170 — the smallest defenceman on this roster and one of the lightest in the league. 2.69 hits per 60 is the 29th percentile and 3.72 blocks is the 36th.
22.5 mph is the 77th percentile among defencemen and 3.0 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 86th. The feet are good and they are not in the class of the two men above him on the depth chart.
0.41 penalties taken per 60 is the 23rd percentile.
The Intangibles
Forty-seventh overall in 2016 by Nashville, and 340 NHL games at 24 with 144 points and a career plus-9.
This book has a weakness for the small, dominant defenceman, and the honest reading here is that this one is not that. Every Colorado forward’s chance share falls when he is on the ice: Mikko Rantanen 55.9 with him against 58.1 without, Valeri Nichushkin 53.6 against 58.6, Nathan MacKinnon 47.6 against 49.7. Three real samples, all in the same direction. He is a 22-minute defenceman on a Stanley Cup team and the measured case for him is thin.
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.
- perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
84.0% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 94th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“the puck management is genuinely tidy”
“the smallest defenceman on this roster and one of the lightest in the league”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,264 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.1%
- 49th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.6%
- 70th 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: 60 for, 59 against. Expected: 49.6 and 51.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 20 points above where the report does. 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 — 56 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 · 67 games
- Top speed
- 22.5 mph
- 85th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.07 a game
- Distance
- 3.09 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 95.4 mph
- 72nd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.4
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 · 1264 minutes at five-on-five
- Erik Johnson19%
- Cale Makar18%
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 49.1% — 2.8 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 1,264 minutes at five-on-five — 88th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Andre Burakovsky | 52.1% | 47.6% | 54.1% |
| Nazem Kadri | 52.9% | 47.6% | 56.3% |
| Mikko Rantanen | 55.9% | 46.2% | 58.1% |
52.1% together, 47.6% for him apart and 54.1% for Burakovsky apart. He was worse away from Burakovsky, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Burakovsky did.
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
106 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 45 feet. 3% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 84% from beyond forty.