The Buffalo Sabres took a step forward this past season, making the Stanley Cup playoffs to end a 15-year playoff drought. Buffalo beat the Boston Bruins in the opening round before losing to the Montreal Canadiens in Round 2. 

Because of the Sabres’ positive 2025-26 season, TheHockeyNews.com’s now-annual process of grading the Sabres will lead to mostly-positive grades, This isn’t to say there’s not areas of concern for Buffalo. But when we’re looking at individual performances in a step-up season, we have to be more generous than not for this Sabres team.

With that out of the way, in this “Sabres Grades” file, we’re examining defenseman Owen Power. The 23-year-old didn’t have a bad year per se, but his offensive totals were down 11 points – moving from a 40-point performance in 2024-25 to 29 points last season – and there’s a prevailing sense that Power hasn’t lived up to the status of being drafted first-overall in 2021. 

But let’s explore Power’s development, and see why we’ve given him a grade that shouldn’t sit well with him:

Owen Power

Position: Defense

Grade: B+

The Skinny: Power is on a solid contract paying him $8.35-million per season for the next five years, but Power’s time-on-ice average of 21:39 was only the fourth-best average of the team’s defensemen. And that time-on-ice average was down from his career average of 22:24. Sabres coach Lindy Ruff doesn’t use Power as much as many believe he should, but that’s something that’s earned, and Power hasn’t taken that next step to justify being considered one of the game’s very best blueliners.

On many different teams, Power would be effectively the No. 1 blueliner, but that’s more to do with the NHL’s general lack of true No. 1 defensemen. Power still has time to grow his game, but at some point, he has to make that leap on his own. Expectations on him will only be so high for so long, and then they’ll be an albatross on him.

Power produced six assists in Buffalo’s 13 playoff games last spring, so he is capable of contributing meaningful amounts of offense. But that’s what makes Power’s drop in point-production so frustrating. It’s not easy to live up to expectations when you have a legitimate No. 1 D-man in Rasmus Dahlin on your team, but Power needs to elevate if Buffalo is going to get beyond the second round of the post-season next spring.

If Power is going to be on your second defense pairing, it means that your top pairing must be pretty darn good. And that’s true for Buffalo. They became one of the best teams in the league last season in part because they took care of business in their own zone, and the Sabres were a top-10 team in the league with a 2.91 goals-against average. So Power deserves credit for some of that.

However, it very much feels like people want more from Power. And the unwelcome truth may be that Power doesn’t have more to give. He’s far from his prime, so the ultimate judgement on Power is still to come. But for now, the Sabres would love little more than for Power to take that next competitive step and evolve into a 1A-type defender for this Buffalo squad.

The Sabres were fortunate to win the draft lottery twice in a three-year span and pick up Dahlin and Power. But it’s fair to say that Power hasn’t reached the heights that Dahlin has. 

After four full years in the NHL, Power hasn’t been a consistently-above-average contributor as Buffalo hoped he’d be, but there’s still time for him to salvage his status as a star D-man. And if he can get back to the same amount of offense as he produced two years ago, Power’s grade will rise accordingly.