Justin Danforth
Buffalo Sabres Right Wing
5-8, 32 years old, 21 points, and a career that started in Finland at 26.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | CBJ | 45 | 10 | 4 | 14 | -5 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 72 | 13.9 | 12:34 |
| 2022-23 | CBJ | 6 | 2 | 1 | 3 | -3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 20.0 | 13:23 |
| 2023-24 | CBJ | 71 | 10 | 16 | 26 | -10 | 26 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 86 | 11.6 | 14:16 |
| 2024-25 | CBJ | 61 | 9 | 12 | 21 | -6 | 18 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 94 | 9.6 | 14:23 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 183 | 31 | 33 | 64 | -24 | 58 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 262 | 11.8 | 13:52 |
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
9 goals and 12 assists in 61 games for 21 points, minus-6, on 14:23 a night with Columbus, including a shorthanded goal.
94 shots in 61 games and 9.6 per cent conversion, in a third-line role on a club that overachieved. A fair season for what he is.
The Finesse Game
Quick and honest and short of skill. The hands are functional and the release is ordinary; 21 points is close to the ceiling and has been for four seasons.
What he does well is arrive. He is among the better forecheckers on any roster he has been on, and the value is in the possessions that creates rather than in what he does with the puck afterwards.
The Physical Game
5-8 and 193, and thick rather than small. He finishes checks on men far bigger, gets to the net, and does not get pushed off pucks as easily as the height suggests.
18 penalty minutes over 61 games. The durability has been reasonable given the style, though he has never played a full season.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, four years of college, three seasons in Finland, and an NHL debut at 28. Almost nobody has that career.
At 32 he is exactly what he has always been: a fourth-line forward who kills penalties and works. Buffalo signed him to make a bottom six harder, which is a reasonable thing to buy cheaply and not a thing that changes a fourteen-year drought.
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
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 is among the better forecheckers on any roster he has been on, and the value is in the possessions that creates rather than in what he does with the puck afterwards.”
“He finishes checks on men far bigger, gets to the net, and does not get pushed off pucks as easily as the height suggests.”
“does not get pushed off pucks as easily as the height suggests”
“Undrafted, four years of college, three seasons in Finland, and an NHL debut at 28.”
“At 32 he is exactly what he has always been: a fourth-line forward who kills penalties and works.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 687 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.5%
- 48th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48%
- 34th 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: 23 for, 32 against. Expected: 25.9 and 26.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 18 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 75 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, 2024-25 · 61 games
- Top speed
- 22.6 mph
- 69th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 2.67 a game
- Distance
- 2.28 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 87.2 mph
- 61st pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.9
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
2024-25 with CBJ · 687 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
- CBJ took 48.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.5% — 1.2 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second line, 687 minutes at five-on-five — 27th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mathieu Olivier | 52.8% | 42.9% | 41.5% |
| Zach Aston-Reese | 53.5% | 43.6% | 44.4% |
| Zach Werenski | 54.3% | 46.2% | 53.3% |
52.8% together, 42.9% for him apart and 41.5% for Olivier 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
117 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 9 of them goals. His median goal came from 9 feet. 50% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 15% from beyond forty.