Draft Prospect Profile:
LD Owen Power, University of Michigan NCAA
Is it possible that the top 2 overall picks both come from the Michigan Wolverines? Owen Power is certainly going early as, despite lacking a singular elite skill, Power possesses a combination of enormous size (6'5-210), excellent skating and very good hockey acumen which scouts and general managers absolutely covet.
While Power is taking some criticism for lacking the high-end puck skills which normally define a defender being considered as a top 3 overall pick, I feel much of this flak is unfair. The 2021 draft, after all, is a draft which lacks a bona fide top overall pick. A team can hardly go wrong with Power, and his combination of size and skating is rare, and he's a darned good player on either side of the puck. Power is not one of those big defenders who is "a great skater for his size", he's a great skater... period. With that wingspan and those wheels, he's an automatic match-up problem for opposing forwards and very difficult to beat one-on-one. He covers a lot of ice fast, and when that is combined with very good awareness, positioning and smarts? Well, you've got a defensive impact player on your hands.
Power also features a shot which is, ah... powerful (sorry, I had to) enough to beat NCAA goaltenders clean from the point. Though he lacks the puck skills of a Quinton Hughes or Cale Makar, Power is extremely adept offensively -- smart and clean with his passes, though not overly creative, with very capable hands and possession/movement qualities. I think he will settle into the 40-50 point range at his NHL peak, while offering top end play in his own zone and providing his coach and teammates an automatic match-up impossibility for the opposition. Ultimately, I think you're looking at a defenseman who will be all-situations excellent, though he will be more first-pairing caliber defensively and more second-pairing caliber on the offensive end.
From a Devils standpoint, Power certainly makes sense, as he combines defensive abilities on the level of a Bahl or Okhotyuk with offensive upside shy of Ty Smith but perhaps a bit higher than Mukhamadullin. However, he is likely to go very high in the 2021 draft and the Devils have great depth at the LD position.