This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Owen Power
Buffalo Sabres Defense
Six foot six, first overall, plus-eight at twenty-one — and fifty-nine assists in 163 games.
| 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 | BUF | 76 | 6 | 27 | 33 | +8 | 28 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 108 | 5.6 | 22:55 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 163 | 12 | 59 | 71 | +21 | 54 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 248 | 4.8 | 23:18 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
6 goals and 27 assists in 76 games — 33 points at 22:55 a night, plus-8, on 108 shots at 5.56 per cent with 28 penalty minutes. He was 21.
49.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,431 minutes, the 46th percentile. His ice went 73-61 against an expectation of 58.58-61.01 — nine goals of scoring missing and eleven fewer conceded than the chances predicted.
The Finesse Game
108 attempts at a median of 42 feet, with 53 per cent from beyond 40 and 11 per cent from inside 20, converting at 5.56 per cent. Twelve goals in 163 career games; the shot is not the reason he plays.
The first pass is early and to the correct side of the ice, and it is the best thing he does. He will carry it out when the pass is not there and the skating is genuinely good for 6-6, but the default is to move it before the forecheck arrives. Fifty-nine assists in 163 career games.
The Physical Game
6-6 and 226, and he defends the rush with reach almost nobody gets around — the stick arrives before the body does and the puck carrier runs out of ice on the outside.
He does not punish anybody and he does not clear his crease by force, which for a man this size is a real omission rather than a stylistic one. 28 penalty minutes in 76 games and 54 in 163 for his career is one of the lowest rates of any defenceman playing these minutes.
The Intangibles
First overall in 2021, out of Michigan, and an NHL regular at 19 who was playing twenty-three minutes a night at 21.
He and Rasmus Dahlin are the only pair of first-overall picks on any roster in this edition who are both defencemen. He is 21 and plus-8 on a club that finished twenty-second, and the question is whether a 6-6 defenceman who does not use the body ever becomes a true number one or stays what he is now, which is a very good second.
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.
- 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.
“**6-6 and 226, and he defends the rush with reach almost nobody gets around** — the stick arrives before the body does and the puck carrier runs out of ice on the outside.”
“**The first pass is early and to the correct side of the ice**, and it is the best thing he does.”
“**Fifty-nine assists in 163 career games.**”
“He does not punish anybody and he does not clear his crease by force, which for a man this size is a real omission rather than a stylistic one.”
“He does not punish anybody and he does not clear his crease by force, which for a man this size is a real omission rather than a stylistic one.”
“**28 penalty minutes in 76 games and 54 in 163 for his career** is one of the lowest rates of any defenceman playing these minutes.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,431 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49%
- 46th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.7%
- 70th 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: 73 for, 61 against. Expected: 58.6 and 61.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 7 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 67 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, 2023-24 · 76 games
- Top speed
- 21.3 mph
- 32nd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.30 a game
- Distance
- 3.26 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 89.1 mph
- 34th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
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
2023-24 · 1431 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, 2023-24
- The club
- BUF took 48.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.0% — 0.1 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,431 minutes at five-on-five — 95th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Henri Jokiharju | 43.1% | 52.3% | 50.4% |
| JJ Peterka | 53.2% | 47.0% | 51.5% |
| Alex Tuch | 48.7% | 49.1% | 51.5% |
43.1% together, 52.3% for him apart and 50.4% 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
159 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 11% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 53% from beyond forty.