Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

10

JJ Peterka

Buffalo Sabres Right Wing

The 92nd percentile in sprints and the 6th in shot velocity, at twenty-one.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22BUF20000000030.016:08
2022-23BUF77122032-15262011259.613:39
2023-24 so far
Career79122032-15262011289.413:43

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 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

12 goals and 20 assists in 77 games — 32 points at 13:39 a night, minus-15, with 2 power-play goals on 125 shots, converting at 9.6 per cent, and 26 penalty minutes.

49.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 952 minutes, the 44th percentile, in a first full NHL season at twenty-one. His ice went 44-57 against an expectation of 45.84-47.43 — ten more goals conceded than the chances predicted, which follows most Sabres around.

The Finesse Game

125 attempts at a median of 26 feet, 37 per cent from inside 20, off a shot measured at 83.1 mph — the 6th percentile in the league.

That is the number that decides how much of the offensive projection survives. He gets to good places and the shot is not going to beat NHL goaltenders from range, so the scoring has to come from inside, and at 6-0 and 189 he is not yet strong enough to live there. 32 points in a first full season is a fine start; the tools say playmaker rather than scorer.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 189 and there is no physical game yet — 26 penalty minutes in 77 games.

The skating is the asset and it is a real one: 2.5 bursts over twenty miles an hour a game at the 92nd percentile. He accelerates away from a standing start better than anybody on this roster, and the whole reason he is in the league at twenty-one is that the first three strides buy him room.

The Intangibles

Thirty-fourth overall in 2020, out of Germany, part of the best German generation the sport has produced.

He is 21. He is one of five forwards on this roster under twenty-three with a genuine NHL future, which is why Buffalo is interesting, and one of five who cannot yet defend, which is why it conceded 300 goals.

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.

  • 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.

  • punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally

    “there is no physical game yet — 26 penalty minutes in 77 games”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 952 minutes

Expected goals
49.1%
45th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
49.1%
46th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 44 for, 57 against. Expected: 45.8 and 47.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
40th
Numbers
45th

The two rank him within 5 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 120 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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

2022-23 · 952 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, 2022-23

The club
BUF took 49.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.1% — 0.7 below the club he did it on.
The role
Second line, 952 minutes at five-on-five — 53rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Dylan Cozens51.2%44.7%47.1%
Jack Quinn52.5%44.7%50.9%
Owen Power50.2%48.5%49.1%

51.2% together, 44.7% for him apart and 47.1% for Cozens apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

182 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 12 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 37% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.