Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

10

JJ Peterka

Utah Mammoth Right Wing

27 goals and 68 points in Buffalo, and the largest thing this club bought in the summer.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22BUF20000000030.016:08
2022-23BUF77122032-15262011259.613:39
2023-24BUF82282250+102830522612.416:24
2024-25BUF77274168-13460317315.618:11
2025-26 so far
Career2386783150-688110952712.716:05

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

27 goals and 41 assists in 77 games for Buffalo — 68 points, at 18:11 a night, minus-1, with 6 power-play goals and 3 game-winners on 173 shots, converting at 15.6 per cent.

It is a career high by ready thirty points and it came on a club that finished 26 points out of the playoffs. Utah acquired him in the summer for Michael Kesselring and a young forward, which is a considerable price and a defensible one.

The Finesse Game

173 attempts and 27 goals. The skating is the separator — he beats a defenceman wide from a standing start and he does it several times a night, and almost everything he produces comes from entering the zone with speed.

41 assists in 77 games. The passing has developed faster than anybody expected; he holds the puck an extra beat now rather than putting it at the net, and on a club that creates chances at the 3rd-best rate in the league that is the right instinct.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 189 and light. He does not forecheck with force and he does not win pucks against defencemen on the wall.

34 penalty minutes in 77 games is a moderate rate. He competes and he is not a physical presence, and the defensive detail is the standing criticism.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick in 2020 out of Munich, and 238 games and 150 points — one of the most productive German forwards in the league.

He is 23. Utah traded a top-four right-shot defenceman for him, which says the club believes it is a season away rather than three.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,030 minutes

Expected goals
47.2%
25th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
48.8%
40th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 44 for, 45 against. Expected: 42.4 and 47.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
76th
Numbers
25th

The report ranks him 51 points above where the numbers do. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 77 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 with BUF · 1030 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, 2024-25

The club
BUF took 47.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.2% — 0.7 below the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 1,030 minutes at five-on-five — 65th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Tage Thompson48.0%46.5%50.9%
Rasmus Dahlin55.4%42.1%51.7%
Bowen Byram46.0%47.9%49.5%

48.0% together, 46.5% for him apart and 50.9% 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

276 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 28 of them goals. His median goal came from 24 feet. 25% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.