This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Samuel Girard
Colorado Avalanche Defense
Five-foot-ten and 170 pounds, twenty-one minutes a night, and thirty-one assists off a shot nobody fears.
| 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 | COL | 76 | 6 | 31 | 37 | -10 | 16 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 119 | 5.0 | 21:30 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 416 | 28 | 153 | 181 | -1 | 83 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 573 | 4.9 | 20:42 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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 31 assists in 76 games, minus-10, 21:30 a night — a career high in points and the worst plus-minus of his six seasons.
52.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,438 minutes, the 69th percentile, but his ice went 55-64 against an expectation of 60.43-55.23: five goals short at one end and nine long at the other. That is a fourteen-goal swing away from the chances, and on a club whose goaltending graded plus-8.7 it is not a goaltending story.
Six seasons, 416 games, 153 assists and 28 goals. The shape has never changed.
The Finesse Game
119 shots at a median of 49 feet, 69 per cent from beyond forty, 10 per cent from inside twenty, off a 90.8 mph shot at the 49th percentile — the shot is average, and from the blue line an average shot is not a threat.
From beyond forty: 72 shots on goal, two goals, 2.78 per cent. From inside forty: 38 shots, four goals. He is not a scoring defenceman and the record is unambiguous about it.
The 31 assists are real and they come from the same place every year: he skates the puck out rather than shooting it in, and 153 assists in 416 games is a career built entirely on the first pass.
The Physical Game
5-10 and 170 pounds — the second-lightest defenceman in this edition to play twenty minutes a night, behind only Jared Spurgeon. The skating carries it: 3.08 miles a game at the 83rd percentile, 22.8 mph at the 78th.
16 penalty minutes in 76 games is remarkable at that size and workload, and it says something the possession numbers hint at — he does not get into physical contests, because he cannot win them and knows it.
Where that costs him is in front of his own net and on the cycle, and the nine goals his ice conceded above expectation is the least flattering evidence in this report.
The Intangibles
47th overall in 2016 to Nashville, traded to Colorado inside his rookie season, and a Cup in 2022.
He is the third defenceman on a club with two of the best in the world, playing 21 minutes because Colorado has nobody else. That is the honest reading of the ice time, and the minus-10 is the receipt.
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.
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.21 penalty minutes a game over 76, 9th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
- workhorse· carries the load at even strength
18:55 a game at five-on-five, 90th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
“he skates the puck out rather than shooting it in, and 153 assists in 416 games is a career built entirely on the first pass”
“he does not get into physical contests, because he cannot win them and knows it”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,438 minutes
- Expected goals
- 52.3%
- 69th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52.6%
- 76th 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: 55 for, 64 against. Expected: 60.4 and 55.2.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 57 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 638 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, 2022-23 · 76 games
- Top speed
- 22.8 mph
- 92nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.93 a game
- Distance
- 3.08 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 90.8 mph
- 44th 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 90.0
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
2022-23 · 1438 minutes at five-on-five
- Devon Toews25%
- Bowen Byram22%
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, 2022-23
- The club
- COL took 52.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.3% — 0.2 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,438 minutes at five-on-five — 96th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mikko Rantanen | 53.6% | 51.4% | 52.9% |
| Nathan MacKinnon | 55.9% | 50.3% | 54.4% |
| Evan Rodrigues | 59.4% | 48.9% | 55.6% |
53.6% together, 51.4% for him apart and 52.9% for Rantanen apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
146 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 23 feet. 10% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 69% from beyond forty.