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.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 687 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.3%
- 56th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.6%
- 39th 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, 32 against. Expected: 27.9 and 27.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 4 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 315 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.
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 50.3% — 2.0 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 | 53.8% | 43.8% | 42.9% |
| Zach Aston-Reese | 53.5% | 45.9% | 48.2% |
| Zach Werenski | 51.6% | 49.4% | 52.2% |
53.8% together, 43.8% for him apart and 42.9% 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.