Photo by Kaiser matias, CC BY-SA 4.0
Samuel Helenius
Los Angeles Kings Center #79
6-6, plays 8 minutes, and is on the roster because of what he is rather than what he has done.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-25 | LAK | 50 | 4 | 3 | 7 | +1 | 25 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 29 | 13.8 | 8:39 |
| 2025-26 | LAK | 53 | 5 | 4 | 9 | -6 | 50 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 38 | 13.2 | 7:59 |
| 2026-27 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 103 | 9 | 7 | 16 | -5 | 75 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 67 | 13.4 | 8:18 |
This Season So Far
The 2026-27 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 9 points in 53 games on 8 minutes a night, with 50 penalty minutes. Across 103 career games he has 16 points.
The Physical Game
The reason he plays. 6-6 and 225, and he uses it on the forecheck and in front of the net. He is difficult to move, wins his share of wall battles by simply outweighing people, and takes a lot of minor penalties for a player with this little ice time.
The Finesse Game
Thin, and honest about it. 38 shots in 53 games says a player who is not looking for offence and is not being asked for any. The hands work around the net at close range; nothing much happens further out.
The skating is the limiting factor. For a big man he moves acceptably in a straight line and struggles to change direction, which is why the ice time has not grown.
The Intangibles
A second-round pick, 23, with a defined fourth-line job and enough size that a coach will keep finding minutes for him. He kills penalties and does not make mistakes with the puck, largely because he does not hold it.
Whether there is more than this is genuinely unknown; the sample is 103 games of 8-minute nights.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 420 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.6%
- 60th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.2%
- 38th 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: 11 for, 16 against. Expected: 14.0 and 13.7.
The eye and the numbers
SightedThe numbers rank him 27 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 69 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, 2025-26 · 53 games
- Top speed
- 21.3 mph
- 15th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.62 a game
- Distance
- 1.27 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 86.6 mph
- 60th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.6
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.
Recent form
Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first
4
points in his last 10 games — 2 goals, 2 assists, 16 shots
Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.
Usual linemates
2025-26 · 420 minutes at five-on-five
- Taylor Ward51%
- Corey Perry15%
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, 2025-26
- The club
- LAK took 51.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.6% — 1.3 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 420 minutes at five-on-five — 13th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jeff Malott | 53.8% | 45.9% | 55.8% |
| Taylor Ward | 57.7% | 42.8% | 40.0% |
| Brian Dumoulin | 49.3% | 51.3% | 50.1% |
53.8% together, 45.9% for him apart and 55.8% for Malott apart. He was worse away from Malott, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Malott 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
62 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 26 feet. 37% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.