Last week Ron Hextall described new Penguins forward Danton Heinen as a "well-rounded player" with some upside.
"There's obvious numbers there in Boston at the start of his career that kind of catches your eye, we feel like there's a little bit more goal-scoring there," Hextall added. "He can kill penalties and we just feel like he's a good fit for our team. He can play both wings. We felt like there's a little bit of a value signing."
Heinen, 26, is 6 foot 1 and 187 pounds and is a left-handed shot. His contract is for one year, one-way, and worth $1.1 million.
The Penguins' offseason additions thus far have bolstered the bottom-six, replacing the losses of Brandon Tanev and Jared McCann with Brock McGinn and Heinen.
In the last Drive to the Net, we took a deeper dive into McGinn's time in Carolina and the trends in his game there.
What can we expect to see from Heinen? Let's take a look.
• The Ducks used Heinen throughout the lineup last season. He most frequently played left wing, primarily on the first or third lines. He briefly played right wing in the Ducks' top six for the first two weeks of the season, and occasionally was moved to right wing later on in the season in the bottom six. His most frequent linemates were Adam Henrique and Jakob Silfverberg.
• Heinen was often deployed against other teams' top players. His most frequent forward opponents last season based on ice time came from the No. 1 lines of the Avalanche (Gabriel Landeskog, Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen) and Coyotes (Nick Schmaltz, Conor Garland).
• Over the last three seasons combined, Heinen's quality of competition was among the highest in the league in the 80th percentile, while the quality of his teammates on the ice with him was in the lower third, in the 33rd percentile.
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• Of Heinen's seven goals and seven assists in 43 games last season, all but one goal (a power play goal) came during even strength.
• Last season saw the highest rate of hits in Heinen's career, averaging 3.62 per 60 minutes of five-on-five ice time, but that's still pretty low. For comparisons sake, that would have ranked 14th among Penguins forwards last season and is closest to the rates of Bryan Rust (3.79) and Kasperi Kapanen (4.4).
• Last season also saw the lowest rate of giveaways in Heinen's career at just .68 per 60 minutes of five-on-five, nearly half the rate of his previous averages in his career. That would have ranked fourth among Penguins forwards last year, trailing only Radim Zohorna (0), Mark Jankowski (.31), and Anthony Angello (.44), players who for the most part didn't have the puck on their stick often enough to give it away anyway. Heinen, though, had his low rate of giveaways while also playing a more significant top-six role at times.
• Heinen had the highest rate of blocked shots in his career last season, averaging 3.05 per 60 minutes of five-on-five. Only two Penguins forwards blocked shots at a higher rate last season -- Colton Sceviour (3.83) and Tanev (3.7).
• Of Heinen's shot attempts last season, 44.4 percent were scoring chances, a high ratio. That ratio ranked fourth among fourth among all Ducks skaters, and would have been sixth on the Penguins.
• In terms of Heinen's isolated impact, 2020-21 was Heinen's best year offensively, and just an average year defensively. The isolated impact visualizations, built by HockeyViz, look at a player's contributions on either side of the puck at five-on-five, accounting for quality of teammates/opponents and deployment usage among skaters. Red areas on the charts show when a player's presence is associated with more shots than the league average, and blue is fewer. The percentage given is the change in expected goals, a stat that aims to show the probability of a goal happening, based on the quantity and type of shot taken. In looking at the charts and result percentage, you want to see more red and a positive percentage for a player's impact on the offense, and more blue and a negative percentage for a player's impact on the defense:
Heinen's presence last season was associated with a rise in expected goals for for only the second time in his career. His presence was also associated with more expected goals against, though.
• The potential upside Hextall was referring to comes from Heinen's production earlier in his career, most notably in 2017-18 when he scored 16 goals and 31 assists with the Bruins. Per the above charts, that was also the season in which Heinen had the best impact defensively. Heinen spent most of that season on the left side of the Bruins' third line alongside David Backes and Riley Nash.
• It's hard to guess where Heinen will fit in the Penguins' forward lines come October, especially given the potential for additional moves in the meantime. With Jeff Carter likely shifting up to the second-line center position while Evgeni Malkin recovers from his knee surgery, it opens up a spot for a center in the bottom-six. Heinen has very limited experience at center at the NHL level, and Hextall only said Heinen can play "both wings" and didn't mention the center position, so it's probably safe to say that Heinen will be used as a wing. Both Heinen and McGinn are capable of playing both wings, so that will give the Penguins some flexibility as far as line combinations go once camp starts.
