It's the basic counter-argument in here for everything positive.
If power-play struggled at last season, it doesn't mean anything how it will work at next season. It worked well a season before. Now there's new assistant coaches again, and new net-front precense. You don't know how it will work.
Even a bad-working power-play is a better chance to score than being even-strength. So Helm does help this team by drawing penalties significantly more than he takes. Over and out. Don't be smart-ass, or do I have to find some mathematical proof for you?
I do enjoy my realism being framed in the negative with the charming pejorative (though I always preferred Nellie To Nancy--the soft 'e' providing more consistency in the musicality of the phrase), and perhaps I can't even deny the accusation. Let us look upon the defects of our beloved team with open and clear eyes, I say. Shine no turds. Rain on all pre-planned cup-parades the moment of their conception, from out the very clouds in which we find our thinnest linings of silver. To be fair to me though, I clung to the tiniest shred of hope that Pavel would return this year right to the end--so in light of that disappointment, I wonder if my perceived negativity can't be somewhat forgiven?
And anyhow, let it not be said that the point of Helm's penalty ratio wasn't well considered by the author of the original line. So let's throw some numbers at your premise to explore the impact of Helm's contribution in this regard. I'm not one to pin a player's value wholly upon the goals and points in his stat line, I too am a champion of many of those "little things" that help win hockey games, of which Helm has been an exemplar. But the contextual realities cannot be ignored either. Detroit's PP last year was, admittedly, not terrible--but it was never better than middling, and only likely to regress with the departure of Datsyuk, the further decline of Zetterberg and no improvement in the puck-moving/PP-quarterbacking in the backend (as of yet). Net front-presence means little-to-nothing when the players on your point can't get shots through defenders or in the vicinity of the net (or for that matter, if the unit can't enter the zone, or can't retain possession with loose pucks at the blue line). Nothing outside of sheer self-delusion indicates they'll be any better in that regard this year. But let's be generous, and allow that they convert at 25% clip anyway, just because the Hockey Gods decree it be--and we'll also generously allow that Helm's drawn/taken ratio puts Detroit on the advantage an extra 20 times this season than they would have been otherwise. That tallies out to five extra goals, which is nice, and if those extra goals fall right, they help us win five more games, which would be really nice! That can make a huge difference in the standings. But practically speaking, it's probably more like two or three wins at very best, and equally likely the extra goals show up in games we'd lose anyway, or games we'd win anyway. Overtimes soften the impact of the point accrued as well. So what portion of Helm's salary/caphit are those goals and potential two or three wins worth this year, and how much will that investment diminish in the remaining years of his contract? Wouldn't that money/cap-space have been better allocated now or in coming seasons to a player with a more direct impact on the offensive fortunes (and possibly defensive fortunes) of the team? Myself, the price of those handful of victories seems too steep, and I'd have been inclined to bide my time and let Helm walk, even accounting for the other things Helm brings to the table.
But again, not solely on goals shall I hang my assessment; a timely penalty can swing the fortunes of a game regardless if a goal is scored on the ensuing powerplay. So let us allow the same 20 extra advantages given; ideally that aids in 20 wins, should all the cards fall right--Helm draws a crucial penalty to kill the other team's PP or snuff out an otherwise momentous shift, that sort of thing, in 20 games where it swings us into the W column. Wouldn't that be incredible? But again we have to account (crudely) for the statistical noise inherent in the highly complex quantum system that is hockey, owing to all the variables difficult or impossible to account for, and all the entanglements therein--so a more realistic highly-optimistic estimate is Helm's positive penalty ratio aids in eight to ten more wins. Still pretty good. But a safer estimate is somewhere in the four to six win range, and a more realistic estimate tops out at four. Still, that can spell the difference between golfing or playoffs, or or getting home ice or starting on the road. But that's only for the upcoming season, and assumes no regression on Helm's part; the likelihood of Helm matching that impact in subsequent years of the contract becoming compoundingly less and less. So again the long-term investment appears dubious on that account. And then I'd wager any lad with horse legs, skates, a stick and a decent work ethic, given similar ice time, would provide similar impact in that specific regard, being available for less cost and term, and being younger and of less-questionable durability to boot. Helm's margin over such a replacement probably is at best two wins. Though indeed it is a bit silly to claim Helm could be easily replaced cheaply and immediately--you give up a skilled, experienced defender and leader in the trade-off for the cost-controlled youngster. But the vast majority of Helm's assets are learnable and teachable; speedy skaters are not the rarest of commodities; and "good locker room guys" aren't particularly uncommon either. By the time Detroit is poised for relevance again (in three-to-five years, the uglier side of Helm's contract), you've had ample enough time to draft and manicure a suitable replacement. Helm's two wins per season probably is of little importance in the wide scope in the interim. Facing economic and other uncertainties, again I'm inclined to hold onto my money rather than invest in a known-but-diminishing quantity like Helm.
Certainly we can patchwork together any number statistics with minor correlative significance with regard to winning hockey games to tell the tale of Helm's historical value as a hockey player, and no one should doubt its veracity--he was (and still is) a good player within his niche. All teams should want a Darren Helm, and any serious contender probably needs one. But of course that's the irony--only true contenders can realize Helm's true value--teams that have no need or desire to shove that square peg into their offensive units, and deploy him where he's most useful, in a energy/pk/lead protecting capacity (good teams get leads and hang on to them), and yet they wouldn't/couldn't/shouldn't pay the premium the Wings paid this offseason for his continued service. They draft them or sign them cheap, just like the Wings did with Helm back in the day and let them walk when they get too pricey, as we should have done. So even when we hold up our patchwork Helm quilt to admire, at the end of the day we've squandered almost 20 million dollars on a five year installment and a significant portion of cap space for it, it isn't getting any newer and was never worth more than half that even when it was. For the record, I love Helm, and at half the price or half the term I'd have been a lot happier with his resigning. But as it is, it's hard to get behind it. While there's a lot of worse ways Holland could have spent the money, it doesn't change that there were probably wiser ways to invest it too.
