This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Rasmus Dahlin

Twenty-five twenty-five a night at twenty-four, fifty-nine points, and the largest single source of offence on the club.

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

2018-19	BUF	82	9	35	44	-13	34	5	0	4	177	5.1	21:09
2019-20	BUF	59	4	36	40	-7	38	2	0	1	90	4.4	19:18
2020-21	BUF	56	5	18	23	-36	26	1	0	0	115	4.3	21:36
2021-22	BUF	80	13	40	53	-22	68	3	0	3	170	7.6	24:01
2022-23	BUF	78	15	58	73	+12	92	6	0	2	204	7.3	25:48
2023-24	BUF	81	20	39	59	-3	66	6	0	2	235	8.5	25:25
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	436	66	226	292	-69	324	23	0	12	991	6.7	23:06

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

20 goals and 39 assists in 81 games — 59 points at 25:25 a night, minus-3, with 6 power-play goals and 2 game-winners on 235 shots at 8.51 per cent, and 66 penalty minutes.

Twenty goals from the blue line, and 39 assists is the largest single source of offence on this roster.

51.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,637 minutes, the 63rd percentile — more ice than anybody on the club by two hundred minutes. His ice went 64-64 against an expectation of 73.07-69.26 — thirteen goals of scoring missing on the ice of the man who scored 59 points himself, and fourteen fewer conceded than the chances predicted.

The Finesse Game

235 attempts at a median of 50 feet, with 68 per cent from beyond 40 and 7 per cent from inside 20, converting at 8.51 per cent — which is a very high rate from that distance and the reason for twenty goals.

He carries the puck out of his own zone rather than passing it out, and the skating is the reason 25:25 a night is possible at all. He gains the offensive line under control against a forecheck and he will walk into the middle of the ice rather than settle for the point.

He walks the line and holds the puck until a forechecker commits, which is the whole of the power play. 226 assists in 436 career games.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 204 and light for the minutes. He does not clear the front of his own net by force and he does not punish anybody, and the defending is done with skating and stick position.

324 penalty minutes in 436 games is a low rate for a defenceman taking this ice. He does not retaliate and he is not an agitator.

The Intangibles

First overall in 2018 and 436 games, 292 points and a career minus-69, all of them here, on clubs that have not made the playoffs in any of them.

He is 24 and is the captain. He has played 25:25 a night for a team that finished twenty-second, and the minus-69 belongs to the eighty-two games around him — the club’s problem is a power play ranked twenty-ninth, not the man running it.

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.

hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
10 of 218 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 4.6%, 93rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
durable· was available
81 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
20:13 a game at five-on-five, 100th 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 carries the puck out of his own zone rather than passing it out**, and the skating is the reason 25:25 a night is possible at all.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“**He walks the line and holds the puck until a forechecker commits**, which is the whole of the power play. **226 assists in 436 career games.**”
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“**He does not clear the front of his own net by force and he does not punish anybody**, and the defending is done with skating and stick position.”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“**He does not clear the front of his own net by force and he does not punish anybody**, and the defending is done with skating and stick position.”
retaliateshe lacks it· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“He does not retaliate and he is not an agitator.”
agitatorhe lacks it· gets under the skin; draws the retaliation
“He does not retaliate and he is not an agitator.”
leadershipa strength· the room, and who holds it
“**He has played 25:25 a night for a team that finished twenty-second, and the minus-69 belongs to the eighty-two games around him** — the club's problem is a power play ranked twenty-ninth, not the man running it.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,637 minutes

Expected goals: 51.3%; 63rd pct
Shot attempts: 53.7%; 83rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 64 for, 64 against. Expected: 73.1 and 69.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

87th

Numbers

63rd

The report ranks him 24 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 78 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 · 81 games

Top speed: 21.4 mph; 39th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.31 a game
Distance: 3.71 miles a game
Hardest shot: 100.7 mph; 95th 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

2023-24 · 1637 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 51.3% — 2.4 above the club he did it on.
The role: Second pair, 1,637 minutes at five-on-five — 100th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Alex Tuch	51.6%	51.2%	49.5%
Henri Jokiharju	54.1%	50.2%	43.4%
JJ Peterka	52.1%	51.0%	52.1%

51.6% together, 51.2% for him apart and 49.5% 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

321 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 20 of them goals. His median goal came from 41 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 68% from beyond forty.