In this contribution we study the optimal power allocation scheme for a coded multicarrier transmission. Specifically, we focus on a bit interleaved coded modulation (BICM) packet transmission implemented with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and in the presence of automatic repeat request (ARQ) protocol. Based on a simple lower-bound of the rate of information bits received without any error, the so called goodput, we develop a power allocation strategy among the different subcarriers so that the system goodput performance metric is maximized. We also demonstrate the optimality of the solution for the proposed objective function under the given power constraint. The effectiveness of the power allocation policy is numerically testified for BIC-OFDM transmission in the context of typical indoor environment.