The clip-on wearable that turns a hockey shift into a graded, benchmarked, video-synced report card - and puts pro-level data in a youth player's pocket.
Above: the HELIOS wordmark. A small New Hampshire team decided the intangibles of skating could be counted, and then went and counted them.
Hockey has always had a measurement problem, which is a strange thing to say about a sport obsessed with statistics. The statistics it obsesses over - goals, assists, plus-minus - describe outcomes. They do not describe the thing every coach in every cold rink actually yells about, which is effort: how hard you pushed off, how quickly you changed direction, whether your left stride was quietly betraying your right. That information existed. It just lived inside expensive arenas wired with beacons and cameras, which is to say it lived somewhere a twelve-year-old in a Tuesday-night league was never going to visit.
HELIOS, a company founded in 2018 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, took the reasonable position that the measurement should follow the player rather than the building. Its answer is the Core: a small sensor that clips to a shoulder pad, requires no rink infrastructure whatsoever, and uses proprietary machine learning to grade four attributes of skating - explosiveness, agility, speed, and balance. The data uploads to the cloud, gets benchmarked against other players in the same age group, and lands in an app. No beacons. No fixed cameras. No permission from the arena.
The clever bit - the part that makes this a technology company and not a pedometer - is what the company calls Stride Recognition Technology, which distinguishes your left skating stride from your right. That sounds like a party trick until you consider that a coach watching from the bench cannot reliably tell you your push-off is 8% weaker on one side over a whole season, and a sensor can tell you after one shift. This is the general shape of good sports tech: it does not replace the coach's eye so much as extend it to the places the eye cannot go.
And then there is the timing, which HELIOS treats as a feature rather than an afterthought. Its Instant Shift Video pairs clips of a player's shifts with the sensor data and delivers both while the player is still on the bench, sweating, receptive, and unable to argue with the tape. Feedback three days later in a film session is education. Feedback thirty seconds after the whistle is behavior change. HELIOS is betting, sensibly, on the second one.
Hockey players at every level deserve access to the same quality of data and insights as pros, and HELIOS makes that possible.— HELIOS
Four attributes, captured stride by stride, benchmarked by age group, and tracked over time so a player can watch the line go up.
A clip-on shoulder-pad sensor with Stride Recognition Technology that identifies left and right strides. FCC/IC certified, no arena infrastructure required.
A smartphone app that benchmarks skating metrics by age group, tracks trends over time, and delivers AI-driven, personalized training feedback.
Syncs shift clips with sensor data so coaches can deliver data-backed feedback the moment a player leaves the ice - not days later.
A subscription bundling the Core hardware with the software platform: continuous benchmarking, video highlights, and gamified training, all season.
In October 2025, HELIOS closed a $2.2M seed round. The dollar figure is ordinary for a hardware startup; the signature list is not. A Hockey Hall of Famer and active NHL players put money in - the people who lived the game betting on the company measuring it.
Hockey Hall of Famer and President of Hockey Operations for the Seattle Kraken.
Active NHL forward (Utah Mammoth) among a syndicate of player-investors.
A cross-market group of investors, including active NHL executives and players.
The Core is at the heart of Helios' performance benchmarking and improvement solution for the broad sports market where positional infrastructure investment is cost prohibitive and prevents mass adoption.— Bill Near, Founder & CEO
HELIOS (Helios Sports, Inc.) founded in Portsmouth, New Hampshire by Bill Near.
The Core wearable sensor is introduced, with Stride Recognition Technology and FCC/IC certification.
Enters the North American market, launching the Core at Pure Hockey retail locations.
Registers two HELIOS trademarks with the US Patent and Trademark Office across International Classes 9, 25 and 42.
Closes a $2.2M seed round to scale the hardware-free wearable, backed by NHL insiders including Ron Francis.
HELIOS sells direct-to-consumer online and through hockey retailers, aiming its membership at individual players, families, coaches and teams across youth, junior, NCAA and pro levels in North America and Europe. Ambassadors have included Toronto Maple Leafs forward Matthew Knies and US Women's National Team player Caroline Harvey.
With these two trademark registrations we've strengthened the brand and identity at the front of our game-changing technology platform.Bill Near, Founder & CEO
Product demos, athlete stories and interviews live on the HELIOS channels.
Facts sourced from HELIOS press releases, Crunchbase and public reporting · Figures approximate where noted.