Jiri Kulich
Buffalo Sabres Center
15 goals in 62 games at 21, on the second-best chance share of any forward here.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-24 | BUF | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 14:53 |
| 2024-25 | BUF | 62 | 15 | 9 | 24 | -4 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 134 | 11.2 | 14:48 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 63 | 15 | 9 | 24 | -5 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 135 | 11.1 | 14:48 |
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
15 goals and 9 assists in 62 games for 24 points, minus-4, on 14:48 a night in his first NHL season.
50.1 per cent at five-on-five, the 54th percentile, with on-ice goals of 37-26 against an expected 31-31. 134 shots in 62 games is a high volume for a rookie in these minutes, and 11.2 per cent conversion is a fair rate.
The Finesse Game
A shooter. The release is quick and he is willing to use it, which is why a 21-year-old in fourteen minutes a night took more shots than several regulars. 15 goals in a rookie season on this club is a genuine result.
The playmaking is the missing half — 9 assists in 62 games — and the puck skills under pressure are still developing. He is a finisher who needs a centre, and Buffalo is a club with three of them.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 193, and willing without being strong yet. He takes contact to get to a shooting position and he is not yet able to win a puck back from an NHL defenceman.
18 penalty minutes over 62 games. The frame will carry more weight and that is the ordinary next step.
The Intangibles
A first-round pick who dominated the American League at 20 and translated it at 21 without a visible adjustment period.
The projection is a 25-goal winger, and the encouraging part is that the underlying numbers came with the goals rather than despite them. On a club whose problem is that its best players do not tilt the ice, he is one of two young forwards who did.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 741 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.1%
- 54th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52%
- 74th 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: 37 for, 26 against. Expected: 31.4 and 31.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 1 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 357 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 73 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 · 741 minutes at five-on-five
- Zach Benson34%
- John-Jason Peterkanow UTA29%
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 50.1% — 2.2 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 741 minutes at five-on-five — 32nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tage Thompson | 50.8% | 49.6% | 48.9% |
| Bowen Byram | 51.6% | 48.9% | 47.6% |
| Rasmus Dahlin | 53.0% | 48.3% | 52.9% |
50.8% together, 49.6% for him apart and 48.9% for Thompson apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
196 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 15 of them goals. His median goal came from 21 feet. 33% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.