This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Dylan Cozens
Ottawa Senators Center
Traded to Ottawa in March for Josh Norris after four seasons in Buffalo, and scored 47 points across the two clubs.
| 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 | BUF | 81 | 31 | 37 | 68 | -3 | 41 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 211 | 14.7 | 16:30 |
| 2023-24 | BUF | 79 | 18 | 29 | 47 | -4 | 42 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 200 | 9.0 | 17:14 |
| 2024-25 | BUF/OTT | 82 | 16 | 31 | 47 | -17 | 68 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 188 | 8.5 | 17:04 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 362 | 82 | 131 | 213 | -58 | 222 | 15 | 5 | 5 | 821 | 10.0 | 16:25 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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
16 goals and 31 assists in 82 games across Buffalo and Ottawa — 47 points at 17:04 a night, minus-17, with 68 penalty minutes.
46.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 27th percentile, across 1,049 minutes. His ice went 51-51 against an expectation of 40.57-47.15 — ten goals better than expected for and three better than expected against, which is the opposite of what happened to most of the forwards in this chapter.
The Finesse Game
188 attempts at a median of 30 feet with 34 per cent from inside 20. The shot is a real one and the 8.5 per cent conversion last season was not.
He is a straight-line player. He gets to the net through the middle rather than around the outside and he is at his best carrying the puck with speed; asked to make a play in a small space he is ordinary.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 205 and he uses it. He finishes checks and he is hard to knock off a puck in a footrace.
68 penalty minutes in 82 games is the highest rate of his career and a good deal of it is the stick foul that follows losing a step. That is the part of the game that has to come down.
The Intangibles
Seventh overall in 2019 and a 68-point season at 21 that has not been matched since — 47, 47 and 47 in the three years after it, on a long contract signed off the back of the one good year.
He was traded to Ottawa in March for Josh Norris, which is a swap of two centres on expensive deals that neither club could make work. He is 24 and this is the season the trade gets judged on.
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
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“He gets to the net through the middle rather than around the outside and he is at his best carrying the puck with speed; asked to make a play in a small space he is ordinary.”
“He finishes checks and he is hard to knock off a puck in a footrace.”
“**68 penalty minutes in 82 games** is the highest rate of his career and a good deal of it is the stick foul that follows losing a step.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,049 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.3%
- 22nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.6%
- 48th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 51 for, 51 against. Expected: 40.6 and 47.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 33 points above where the numbers do. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.
Both bars are percentiles among the 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 73 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, 2024-25 · 82 games
- Top speed
- 22.5 mph
- 62nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.76 a game
- Distance
- 2.64 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 87.2 mph
- 60th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.9
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
2024-25 with BUF · 819 minutes at five-on-five
- Jack Quinn37%
- Zach Benson30%
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, 2024-25
- The club
- OTT took 50.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.3% — 3.9 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 1,049 minutes at five-on-five — 68th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owen Power | 42.9% | 47.8% | 48.7% |
| Jack Quinn | 42.5% | 47.7% | 47.1% |
| Bowen Byram | 47.0% | 45.9% | 49.3% |
42.9% together, 47.8% for him apart and 48.7% for Power apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.
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
250 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 16 of them goals. His median goal came from 30 feet. 34% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 25% from beyond forty.