This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Dylan Cozens

Thirty-eight points at twenty-one with a 23.0 mph top speed at the 81st percentile — and an 8.1 per cent conversion at the 21st.

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

2020-21	BUF	41	4	9	13	-15	16	1	0	0	62	6.5	14:21
2021-22	BUF	79	13	25	38	-19	55	2	0	1	160	8.1	15:54
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	120	17	34	51	-34	71	3	0	1	222	7.7	15:22

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 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

13 goals and 25 assists in 79 games — 38 points at 15:54 a night, minus-19, with 2 power-play goals on 160 shots and 55 penalty minutes.

Thirty-eight points in a second full season at twenty-one, and 51 in 120 career games.

47.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,063 minutes, the 36th percentile. His ice went 39-48 against an expectation of 39.07-42.76 — the scoring landed where the chances said and five more went in behind him than they predicted.

The Finesse Game

160 attempts at a median of 29 feet with 44 per cent from inside the slot, converting at 8.1 per cent — the 21st percentile off an 86.8 mph release at the 27th. The shot is soft and the locations are middling, and thirteen goals is what that combination produces.

1.58 even-strength points per 60 is the 36th percentile. Twenty-five assists says the vision is ahead of the finishing, which at twenty-one is the right way round.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 205, and 1.67 hits per 60 at the 15th percentile with 1.05 blocks at the 18th. He is a big centre who does not yet play like one, and 55 penalty minutes is a young man’s total rather than a heavy player’s.

The skating is the asset: 23.0 mph top speed is the 81st percentile among forwards and 8.1 bursts above 20 mph per 60 is the 78th, and he carries rather than chips. For a 6-3 centre, that combination is what a first line is eventually built out of.

The Intangibles

Seventh overall in 2019, out of Lethbridge, and 120 NHL games before his twenty-second birthday.

He is 21. Buffalo has a 6-6 centre who scored 38 goals, a 22-year-old first-overall defenceman and this — and Cozens is the one whose development still has to happen for the plan to work, because a club needs two centres and Tage Thompson cannot be both of them.

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
a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed

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.

durable· was available
79 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“he carries rather than chips”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,063 minutes

Expected goals: 47.7%; 36th pct
Shot attempts: 49.7%; 52nd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 39 for, 48 against. Expected: 39.1 and 42.8.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

53rd

Numbers

36th

The two rank him within 17 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.

Both bars are percentiles among the 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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, 2021-22 · 79 games

Top speed: 23.0 mph; 88th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 2.15 a game
Distance: 2.61 miles a game
Hardest shot: 86.8 mph; 48th 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.

Usual linemates

2021-22 · 1063 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, 2021-22

The club: BUF took 46.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.7% — 1.4 above the club he did it on.
The role: Third line, 1,063 minutes at five-on-five — 70th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Vinnie Hinostroza	46.5%	48.6%	46.5%
Rasmus Dahlin	46.0%	48.7%	46.5%
Kyle Okposo	51.7%	46.1%	41.8%

46.5% together, 48.6% for him apart and 46.5% for Hinostroza 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

209 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 13 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 33% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 22% from beyond forty.