This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

JJ Peterka

Twenty-eight goals at twenty-two on 226 shots, and the club's second-most dangerous shooter.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2021-22	BUF	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	0.0	16:08
2022-23	BUF	77	12	20	32	-15	26	2	0	1	125	9.6	13:39
2023-24	BUF	82	28	22	50	+10	28	3	0	5	226	12.4	16:24
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	161	40	42	82	-5	54	5	0	6	354	11.3	15:05

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

28 goals and 22 assists in 82 games — 50 points at 16:24 a night, plus-10, with 3 power-play goals and 5 game-winners on 226 shots, converting at 12.39 per cent, and 28 penalty minutes. He was 22.

52.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,156 minutes, the 69th percentile. His ice went 61-46 against an expectation of 53.90-49.52 — thirteen goals of scoring missing at five-on-five, on the ice of a man who scored twenty-eight.

The Finesse Game

226 attempts at a median of 29 feet, with 30 per cent from inside 20 and 18 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 12.39 per cent.

The skating is the first thing about him — he enters the zone at speed and cuts to the middle rather than driving wide, and the release comes off the rush before a goaltender has finished setting. Forty goals in 161 career games at 22.

22 assists on 50 points. He is a scorer and the passing is what happens when the shot is covered.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 189 and light. He does not forecheck with force and he does not win pucks on the wall against a defenceman, and the game is played in open ice by design.

28 penalty minutes in 82 games and 54 in 161 for his career. He does not agitate and he does not retaliate.

The Intangibles

Thirty-fourth overall in 2020, out of Munich, and 161 games and 82 points at 22.

A second-round pick who scores twenty-eight goals in his second full season is the best piece of drafting on a roster full of first-round picks, and he is one of two forwards here whose trajectory is plainly still going up.

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.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
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.

durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“**The skating is the first thing about him** — he enters the zone at speed and cuts to the middle rather than driving wide, and the release comes off the rush before a goaltender has finished setting.”
playmakerhe lacks it· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“22 assists on 50 points. He is a scorer and the passing is what happens when the shot is covered.”
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“**He does not forecheck with force and he does not win pucks on the wall against a defenceman**, and the game is played in open ice by design.”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“**He does not forecheck with force and he does not win pucks on the wall against a defenceman**, and the game is played in open ice by design.”
agitatorhe lacks it· gets under the skin; draws the retaliation
“He does not agitate and he does not retaliate.”
retaliateshe lacks it· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“He does not agitate and he does not retaliate.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,156 minutes

Expected goals: 52.1%; 69th pct
Shot attempts: 52.8%; 77th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 61 for, 46 against. Expected: 53.9 and 49.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

62nd

Numbers

69th

The two rank him within 7 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 — 72 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 · 82 games

Top speed: 22.4 mph; 63rd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 2.29 a game
Distance: 2.73 miles a game
Hardest shot: 84.7 mph; 37th pct

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 · 1156 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: BUF took 48.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.1% — 3.2 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,156 minutes at five-on-five — 78th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Dylan Cozens	52.9%	51.5%	44.8%
Rasmus Dahlin	52.1%	52.1%	51.0%
Owen Power	53.2%	51.5%	47.0%

52.9% together, 51.5% for him apart and 44.8% for Cozens apart. Cozens was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Cozens 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

316 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 27 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 30% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 18% from beyond forty.