This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Owen Power
Buffalo Sabres Defense
40 points at 22 from 6-6, and a minus-13 that says more about the club than about him.
| 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 | BUF | 79 | 7 | 33 | 40 | -13 | 16 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 139 | 5.0 | 21:19 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 242 | 19 | 92 | 111 | +8 | 70 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 387 | 4.9 | 22:39 |
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
7 goals and 33 assists in 79 games for 40 points, minus-13, on 21:19 a night.
48 per cent at five-on-five, the 31st percentile. His on-ice goals were 60-48 against an expected 50-54 — 10 goals of finishing luck at one end and 6 of goaltending against him at the other, which is a good illustration of why the rating is not the story.
The Finesse Game
The skating for 6-6 is genuinely unusual — long, easy, and quick enough to recover when he is beaten wide, which most defencemen this size cannot do. He moves the puck early and well and 33 assists is a real total.
What has not arrived is the shot. 139 shots and 7 goals with only 11 per cent of the attempts from inside 20 feet; he was the 1st overall pick partly on an offensive projection that has settled into competent rather than dangerous.
The Physical Game
6-6 and 226, and he does not play to it. He defends with reach and position rather than force, and he can be moved off the front of his own net by forwards who are far smaller.
16 penalty minutes over 79 games. For a defenceman of this size playing 21 minutes a night, that is an absence of involvement rather than discipline.
The Intangibles
The 1st overall pick, a top-four job at 20, and three NHL seasons that have been steady rather than ascending.
At 22 there is a great deal of time. The concern is the shape of the development: the passing and skating are already good and the two things that would make him a top-pair defenceman — a shot and a willingness to be physical — have not moved in three years.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,330 minutes
- Expected goals
- 48%
- 31st pct
- Shot attempts
- 52%
- 74th 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: 60 for, 48 against. Expected: 50.3 and 54.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 16 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 357 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.
Usual linemates
2024-25 · 1330 minutes at five-on-five
- Bowen Byram24%
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
- BUF took 47.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.0% — 0.1 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,330 minutes at five-on-five — 93rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alex Tuch | 47.1% | 48.4% | 48.5% |
| John-Jason Peterka | 50.0% | 47.2% | 45.8% |
| Tage Thompson | 52.0% | 46.7% | 48.4% |
47.1% together, 48.4% for him apart and 48.5% for Tuch 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
193 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 29 feet. 11% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 53% from beyond forty.