This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Samuel Girard
Colorado Avalanche Defense
5-10 and 170 pounds, 21 assists, and the smallest man in the league playing 21 minutes a night.
| 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 | COL | 59 | 3 | 15 | 18 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 73 | 4.1 | 19:23 |
| 2024-25 | COL | 73 | 3 | 21 | 24 | +7 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 95 | 3.2 | 20:51 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 548 | 34 | 189 | 223 | +6 | 107 | 3 | 0 | 5 | 741 | 4.6 | 20:35 |
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
3 goals and 21 assists in 73 games for 24 points, plus-7, on 20:51 a night — the third-heaviest defenceman workload on the club.
52.9 per cent at five-on-five, the 77th percentile, over 1,297 minutes. 95 shots from a median of 54 feet with 78 per cent of them from beyond 40, which is a defenceman keeping pucks in and getting them to the net rather than one hunting his own offence.
The Finesse Game
The skating and the first pass are the whole game, and both are very good. He escapes a forecheck by turning away from it rather than absorbing it, which is the only way a man his size survives the retrieval, and he does it cleanly enough to run a second pair without a partner who has to cover for him.
The puck decisions are quick and mostly right. What he does not have is a shot — 3 goals on 95 attempts, and a release soft enough that killers do not respect it, which is why he has never held a power-play job on a club with Makar and Toews on it.
The Physical Game
5-10 and 170, and the smallest regular defenceman in the league. He is not going to move anybody from the front of his net and he does not pretend otherwise: the defending is done with feet, angles and an active stick, and when it fails there is no plan B.
Against heavy forechecks it fails more. 14 penalty minutes says he is not compensating with the stick, which is to his credit and also means the puck simply goes in behind him sometimes.
The Intangibles
He took a leave from the club in 2022 for his mental health, came back, and has played three full seasons since without it being a story, which is the outcome everyone hopes for and does not always get.
At 27 he is what he is: a genuinely useful second-pair defenceman on a good team and a liability on a bad one, because everything he does well depends on his partner and his forwards getting back. Colorado’s structure suits him. Very few others would.
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
0.19 penalty minutes a game over 73, 8th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
“The skating and the first pass are the whole game, and both are very good.”
“He is not going to move anybody from the front of his net and he does not pretend otherwise”
“the defending is done with feet, angles and an active stick”
“14 penalty minutes says he is not compensating with the stick, which is to his credit”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,297 minutes
- Expected goals
- 52.9%
- 77th pct
- Shot attempts
- 53.3%
- 85th 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: 57 for, 57 against. Expected: 54.5 and 48.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 56 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 637 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, 2024-25 · 73 games
- Top speed
- 22.7 mph
- 88th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.95 a game
- Distance
- 3.02 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 87.3 mph
- 30th 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 · 1297 minutes at five-on-five
- Josh Manson36%
- Sam Malinski23%
- Cale Makar13%
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
- COL took 53.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.9% — 0.3 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,297 minutes at five-on-five — 91st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Josh Manson | 49.1% | 54.6% | 45.8% |
| Casey Mittelstadt | 47.6% | 55.2% | 42.1% |
| Nathan MacKinnon | 58.5% | 50.3% | 59.2% |
49.1% together, 54.6% for him apart and 45.8% for Manson apart. He was carrying it: the share stayed with him and left Manson behind.
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
134 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 25 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 78% from beyond forty.