This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Rasmus Dahlin
Buffalo Sabres Defense
68 points and a 52.9 per cent chance share, and the only Buffalo skater who consistently tilts the ice.
| 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 | BUF | 73 | 17 | 51 | 68 | +11 | 54 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 200 | 8.5 | 24:14 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 509 | 83 | 277 | 360 | -58 | 378 | 28 | 0 | 13 | 1191 | 7.0 | 23:16 |
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
17 goals and 51 assists in 73 games for 68 points, plus-11, on 24:14 a night and 200 shots — the heaviest workload on the club and the most points by a distance.
52.9 per cent at five-on-five, the 78th percentile, and the only figure on this roster above the 70th. His on-ice goals were 46-48 against an expected 56-49, so he was outscored while creating 7 more than he allowed. That is a goaltending problem, not a defenceman one.
The Finesse Game
The skating is elite and the puck game is built on it. He escapes pressure by changing direction rather than by outrunning it, carries out of his own zone as a matter of course, and joins the rush as a fourth attacker rather than a trailer.
200 shots from the blue line is a genuine volume and 17 goals from it is a real return. 51 assists is where the value concentrates — he is a defenceman who runs a power play and a breakout equally well, which is rare.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 204, and more physical than most defencemen with this much skill. He finishes checks, defends his net front, and does not avoid the corners.
54 penalty minutes is a high total and part of it is a captain playing 24 minutes on a club that loses. The durability has been reasonable — 73 games, and he has cleared 70 in five of seven seasons.
The Intangibles
The 1st overall pick, the captaincy at 23, and seven seasons without a playoff game. He has never publicly asked to leave and the question follows him anyway.
He is a genuine top-five defenceman in the league on a club that has not built anything around him. At 25 with a long contract, the organisation’s entire credibility rests on whether the next three seasons look different from the last seven.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,293 minutes
- Expected goals
- 52.9%
- 78th pct
- Shot attempts
- 54.8%
- 91st 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: 46 for, 48 against. Expected: 55.5 and 49.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 17 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 315 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 83 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 · 1293 minutes at five-on-five
- Bowen Byram48%
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 52.9% — 5.0 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,293 minutes at five-on-five — 91st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bowen Byram | 53.3% | 52.6% | 44.8% |
| Tage Thompson | 53.2% | 52.7% | 46.1% |
| John-Jason Peterka | 55.4% | 51.7% | 42.1% |
53.3% together, 52.6% for him apart and 44.8% for Byram apart. Byram was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Byram than for him.
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
274 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 17 of them goals. His median goal came from 30 feet. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 70% from beyond forty.