This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Jason Zucker
Buffalo Sabres Left Wing
Six hundred and ninety-seven games, three clubs in one season, and eighty-one penalty minutes at thirty-two.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011-12 | MIN | 6 | 0 | 2 | 2 | -2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 0.0 | 11:02 |
| 2012-13 | MIN | 20 | 4 | 1 | 5 | +4 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 34 | 11.8 | 11:16 |
| 2013-14 | MIN | 21 | 4 | 1 | 5 | +2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 40 | 10.0 | 12:59 |
| 2014-15 | MIN | 51 | 21 | 5 | 26 | -9 | 18 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 124 | 16.9 | 15:04 |
| 2015-16 | MIN | 71 | 13 | 10 | 23 | -4 | 20 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 158 | 8.2 | 15:35 |
| 2016-17 | MIN | 79 | 22 | 25 | 47 | +34 | 30 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 172 | 12.8 | 15:17 |
| 2017-18 | MIN | 82 | 33 | 31 | 64 | +8 | 44 | 7 | 1 | 7 | 222 | 14.9 | 16:58 |
| 2018-19 | MIN | 81 | 21 | 21 | 42 | -9 | 28 | 7 | 0 | 5 | 214 | 9.8 | 17:05 |
| 2019-20 | MIN/PIT | 60 | 20 | 21 | 41 | -4 | 21 | 7 | 0 | 4 | 111 | 18.0 | 16:20 |
| 2020-21 | PIT | 38 | 9 | 9 | 18 | -8 | 21 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 67 | 13.4 | 15:41 |
| 2021-22 | PIT | 41 | 8 | 9 | 17 | -2 | 15 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 102 | 7.8 | 14:49 |
| 2022-23 | PIT | 78 | 27 | 21 | 48 | -4 | 47 | 2 | 0 | 5 | 197 | 13.7 | 15:39 |
| 2023-24 | ARI/NSH | 69 | 14 | 18 | 32 | -9 | 81 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 150 | 9.3 | 13:49 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 697 | 196 | 174 | 370 | -3 | 337 | 34 | 3 | 30 | 1601 | 12.2 | 15:28 |
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
14 goals and 18 assists in 69 games for Arizona and Nashville — 32 points at 13:49 a night, minus-9, with 5 power-play goals on 150 shots at 9.33 per cent, and 81 penalty minutes.
50.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 842 minutes, the 57th percentile. His ice went 32-36 against an expectation of 35.79-35.13 — eight goals scored above expectation.
The Finesse Game
150 attempts at a median of 25 feet, with 39 per cent from inside 20 and 19 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 9.33 per cent against a career 12.24.
He drives the net off the wing and takes the puck to the paint, and 196 goals in 697 career games is a genuine scorer’s record — three seasons of twenty or more, and one of thirty-three.
18 assists. He is a finisher rather than a distributor and always has been.
The Physical Game
5-11 and 198. He forechecks hard for his size and he finishes checks, and he plays through traffic rather than around it.
81 penalty minutes in 69 games and 337 in 697 for his career — a high rate for a top-nine winger who is not an enforcer, and a fair share of it is retaliation. He answers back.
The Intangibles
Fifty-ninth overall in 2010 by Minnesota, and 697 games and 370 points at 32 across four clubs, with a long history of injury behind him.
He signed here in the summer. On a club whose power play was 30th, a winger with 34 career power-play goals and a willingness to stand in front is a specific and sensible addition, and he is also 32 on a roster whose oldest forward otherwise is 29.
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.
- 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.
“**He drives the net off the wing and takes the puck to the paint**, and 196 goals in 697 career games is a genuine scorer's record — three seasons of twenty or more, and one of thirty-three.”
“**He forechecks hard for his size and he finishes checks**, and he plays through traffic rather than around it.”
“**He forechecks hard for his size and he finishes checks**, and he plays through traffic rather than around it.”
“**81 penalty minutes in 69 games and 337 in 697 for his career** — a high rate for a top-nine winger who is not an enforcer, and a fair share of it is retaliation. **He answers back.**”
“18 assists. He is a finisher rather than a distributor and always has been.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 842 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.5%
- 57th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48%
- 35th 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: 32 for, 36 against. Expected: 35.8 and 35.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 14 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 68 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 · 69 games
- Top speed
- 21.9 mph
- 36th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.81 a game
- Distance
- 2.20 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 89.9 mph
- 70th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.5
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 with ARI · 627 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
- NSH took 52.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.5% — 2.0 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 842 minutes at five-on-five — 43rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Logan Cooley | 51.0% | 50.2% | 47.9% |
| Alex Kerfoot | 46.8% | 51.6% | 46.4% |
| Michael Carcone | 43.9% | 52.7% | 44.6% |
51.0% together, 50.2% for him apart and 47.9% for Cooley apart. Cooley was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Cooley 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
217 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 14 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 39% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.