This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Owen Power

First overall, 23:48 a night at twenty, and 3.44 miles a game at the 17th percentile in top speed.

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

2021-22	BUF	8	2	1	3	+3	2	0	0	0	10	20.0	22:05
2022-23	BUF	79	4	31	35	+10	24	0	0	1	130	3.1	23:48
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	87	6	32	38	+13	26	0	0	1	140	4.3	23:39

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 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

4 goals and 31 assists in 79 games — 35 points at 23:48 a night, plus-10, on 130 shots and only 24 penalty minutes.

Twenty-three minutes and forty-eight seconds a night in a first full season, at twenty years old, which is a workload almost no defenceman that age is given. 49.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,608 minutes — the most minutes on the club — the 46th percentile. His ice went 88-71 against an expectation of 75.03-77.02.

The Finesse Game

130 attempts at a median of 41 feet, 52 per cent from beyond 40 and 21 per cent from inside 20, converting at just 3.08 per cent off an 87.6 mph shot at the 27th percentile. The shot is the weakest part of the game and four goals says so.

31 assists is what a first-overall defenceman is drafted for. He is calm with the puck under pressure and the outlet pass is early and accurate, and at 6-6 he can hold a forechecker off with one arm while making it.

The Physical Game

6-6 and 226, and he does not play anything like it — 24 penalty minutes in 79 games is extraordinarily light for a defenceman that size playing that many minutes. He defends with reach and position rather than with force, which works until somebody decides to stand in front of his goaltender.

The tracking shows the same shape as Dahlin’s: 3.44 miles a game at the 96th percentile on a top speed of 21.6 mph at the 17th. He is always moving and he is not fast, and a 6-6 defenceman who cannot skate away from trouble has to read it early instead.

The Intangibles

First overall in 2021, out of Michigan, and eighty-seven NHL games into a career that will be measured against Dahlin’s whether that is fair or not.

He is 20. Buffalo has two first-overall defencemen on the same blue line, which no club has had in this form, and the interesting question is not whether Power is good — 35 points and 24 minutes at twenty says he is — but whether a club can build a defence around two puck-movers and no one who hurts anybody.

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.

slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
29.5% of his attempts in the slot, 98th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
durable· was available
79 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
20:21 a game at five-on-five, 99th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He is calm with the puck under pressure and the outlet pass is early and accurate, and at 6-6 he can hold a forechecker off with one arm while making it.”
defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens
“He defends with reach and position rather than with force, which works until somebody decides to stand in front of his goaltender.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“24 penalty minutes in 79 games is extraordinarily light for a defenceman that size playing that many minutes”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,608 minutes

Expected goals: 49.3%; 46th pct
Shot attempts: 52.4%; 74th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 88 for, 71 against. Expected: 75.0 and 77.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

76th

Numbers

46th

The report ranks him 30 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 120 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 68 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.

Usual linemates

2022-23 · 1608 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, 2022-23

The club: BUF took 49.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.3% — 0.5 below the club he did it on.
The role: First pair, 1,608 minutes at five-on-five — 100th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Henri Jokiharju	45.8%	52.2%	54.7%
Jeff Skinner	51.8%	48.0%	53.1%
Tage Thompson	50.5%	48.8%	51.2%

45.8% together, 52.2% for him apart and 54.7% for Jokiharju 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

149 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 21% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 52% from beyond forty.