Keeping with our theme of players who found their games in pretty significant ways during the 2024-25 season, we arrive at the newly extended Helge Grans.
Grans came in for his second season with the Phantoms (and fourth in the AHL), still a bit unpolished, still looking for his role at the North American professional level. But as a testament to his work put in and willingness to push through the difficult parts of the development arc, he built his game back up and even managed to leverage a very strong start to the season in the AHL into a cup of coffee with the big club in the NHL. There’s a lot of work to be done still, but Grans has finally gotten things moving in the right direction again.
| Games played | Goals | Assists | Points | PIM | Shots on goal | Shooting percentage |
| 66 | 8 | 15 | 23 | 42 | 125 | 6.4 |
The one area where his step forward is most immediately evident is on the stat line. While not absolutely tops in scoring among defensemen on the team (those honors fall on Louie Belpedio for points, and Ethan Samson for goals), Grans settled in well in the third spot on the ranking and showed up nicely as another option to contribute some offense from the back end. Grans’s eight goals and 23 points, too, are a huge step up from the last season, wherein he only scored one goal and eight points total.
It’s clear that as of this season, Grans is really starting to feel comfortable at this level, more confident with the puck, and the offense is beginning to come alive as a result. A big part of his success has come as he’s gotten better at finding lanes to get his shots all the way through to the net, but also just by virtue of the fact that he’s shooting more frequently (he’s up to 1.89 shots per game from 1.53 last season). It isn’t a massive uptick, but it’s enough to make a difference. The Phantoms have at times this past season leaned a bit too heavily on offense from the perimeter, but on the whole, Grans has been pretty notably choosing his spots well.
| Games Tracked | Corsi-For % | Scoring Chances-For % | High Danger Attempts-For % | Primary Shot Assists | Secondary Shot Assists |
| 17 | 55.90 | 55.60 | 49.30 | 6 | 3 |
The underlying impacts for Grans are a bit of a wild mixed bag. On the one hand, the Phantoms were generally in a good spot when Grans is on the ice, getting the better of the share of overall shot attempts as well as scoring chances (coming from the sort of home plate area of the ice), keeping right up with the team average in both of those metrics. But then we see the differential of high danger chances swings well below the team average when Grans is on the ice, suggesting that while he’s able to help drive positive results from the perimeter on the ice, he’s getting caved in a bit in the areas right around the net, so that’s certainly an area in need of shoring up.
Three Questions
Did he live up to expectations?
The expectations for Grans heading into last season, in truth, were a bit undefined. Brought into the mix as a piece in the three-way trade which ultimately sent Ivan Provorov to Columbus, Grans was something of an intriguing candidate for a reclamation project — after a strong rookie year with the Reign in the COVID-shortened, taxi squad diminished season in 2021-22, he followed up with an underwhelming sophomore season in the Kings’ organization. Still a bit raw to begin with, it was going to take some real time and work to rebuild his game at the pro level, and Grans’s first season with the Phantoms was fine enough, if somewhat unspectacular. It was a step forward, to be sure, but not a huge one, and not one which allowed him to make a lot of headway in climbing up the organizational depth chart.
There was a feeling, then, that if Grans was going to show something to make his case to stick around in this organization, it had to be now, whatever it was. And, all in all, Grans delivered on that need. He brought a more complete game on the whole, taking a step forward in the scoring as we saw, but also settling in with his defensive coverages to a greater degree. It’s still all a work in progress, but he’s getting things moving in the right direction again, and has carved out a nice role for himself with the team. It’s a good reminder, if nothing else, of how much developmental runway he still has ahead of him — despite having completed his fourth year in the AHL, he’s still just 23 years old. It’s taken him a while to find his footing in the league, but it’s all understandable when the age is taken into account.
What would we like to see him improve on next season?
While he made some positive strides last season, there are still some areas in his game the need working on. There was a pretty collective struggle for the Phantoms (on an on and off basis) as far as their awareness in the defensive zone was concerned — we suspect some of this was system, or lack thereof, based — and Grans certainly had his moments when his defensive reads (particularly in-zone) weren’t as sharp as we might have liked to see. The hope is that with more reps in the league, with more experience, he’ll get more comfortable and it will become more instinctive, knowing what to do on these plays coming at him.
There’s also some polishing that we’d like to see him doing on the offensive side of the puck as well. He’s doing better at getting shots through from the point, but we’d like to see him getting a little more involved as far as activating in the offensive zone goes. Some of this will depend on the new system, to be sure, but it’s clear that Grans has some good offensive instincts, it’s just a matter of him getting more confident to jump in more frequently.
What can we expect from him next season?
Next season is going to be an interesting one for Grans. For starters, with the possibility still very much alive that Rasmus Ristolainen might still be out to start training camp (we remember, he was projected to miss six months after undergoing surgery on his triceps at the end of March), the door remains open for one of the defense prospects to make a real run at making the opening night roster out of camp. Now, one might assume that Emil Andrae would have the inside track on one of those roster spots given where he is in his development and his overall standing within the organization, but if they’re looking to make a more straightforward handedness swap-in, with a good camp, Grans might have be best case to sub in for Ristolainen, at least in the short term.
The numbers game does complicate things though, and while there might be room for Grans to start the season back up with the big club, the expectation is that he’ll likely be on the outside looking in on a more long term spot, and will spend the bulk of the season back down with the Phantoms (though remaining a top call-up option, should further need arise). And down with the Phantoms, he’s in line to play a much more significant role than he would up with the Flyers. While his role on the power play is a bit up in the air — one imagines Oliver Bonk will be given a good portion of that time, along with Andrae, if he’s still kicking around — it’s all but certain that he’ll be given a good share of minutes at even strength, as he’s shown some dependability in that area. And the hope is that he can continue to build his game in the right direction, and continue to carve out a role for himself in this organization.