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Bowen Byram

22 minutes a night, 42 points, and the only defenceman here whose numbers are average.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2020-21	COL	19	0	2	2	+1	23	0	0	0	21	0.0	17:31
2021-22	COL	30	5	12	17	+7	12	1	0	2	49	10.2	18:48
2022-23	COL	42	10	14	24	+7	38	2	1	1	65	15.4	21:53
2023-24	COL/BUF	73	11	18	29	0	53	0	0	0	84	13.1	20:21
2024-25	BUF	82	7	31	38	+11	46	0	0	2	94	7.4	22:42
2025-26	BUF	82	11	31	42	+15	48	1	0	5	109	10.1	22:20
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	328	44	108	152	+41	220	4	1	10	422	10.4	21:19

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

11 goals and 31 assists in all 82 games — 42 points, plus-15, at 22:20 a night. His 5-on-5 work was done in Buffalo, where the goals went 73-67 in his favour across 1,538 minutes.

The Finesse Game

The skating is the asset and it is a genuine one — he is among the better skating defencemen in the league and he uses it to leave his own zone with the puck rather than to hand it over.

42 points is a legitimate top-pair offensive return. The shot is a point shot used sensibly: 192 unblocked attempts, median 42 feet, 12 goals, and enough of them get through to matter.

The Physical Game

6-1, 205, and he defends with feet and stick. 48 penalty minutes. He is not clearing the crease and he can be outmuscled in front, which is why his best seasons have come beside a heavier partner.

The Intangibles

49.3 per cent of the expected goals, 48th percentile, and 49.4 per cent of the shot attempts, 51st — dead average, in the heaviest minutes on a club that led the league in finishing.

Dead average is a criticism on most rosters. On this one it makes him comfortably the best defenceman, since every incumbent sits in the bottom 15th percentile.

He is 25, the fourth pick in 2019, a Stanley Cup winner as a teenager, and on his third organisation. Chicago has bought the one thing it had none of. Whether an average top-4 defenceman looks average behind this forward group is the question.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
21.9% of his attempts in the slot, 96th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,538 minutes

Expected goals: 49.3%; 49th pct
Shot attempts: 49.4%; 51st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 73 for, 67 against. Expected: 61.1 and 62.9.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

49th

Numbers

49th

The two rank him within 0 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.

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 — 72 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 · 82 games

Top speed: 22.9 mph; 91st pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.30 a game
Distance: 3.22 miles a game
Hardest shot: 91.9 mph; 59th pct

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

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 6 assists, 16 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 with BUF · 1538 minutes at five-on-five

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: BUF took 51.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.3% — 1.8 below the club he did it on.
The role: First pair, 1,538 minutes at five-on-five — 99th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Owen Power	49.5%	49.2%	51.1%
Alex Tuch	50.9%	48.5%	53.8%
Tage Thompson	49.3%	49.3%	51.1%

49.5% together, 49.2% for him apart and 51.1% for Power apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

192 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 12 of them goals. His median goal came from 24 feet. 19% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 52% from beyond forty.