Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

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

19

Peyton Krebs

Buffalo Sabres Center

28 points, 60 penalty minutes, and a fourth-line centre being carried by 17 goals of goaltending luck.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2020-21VGK4011+1000010.011:26
2021-22VGK/BUF5771522-26220025612.514:35
2022-23BUF7491726-8501107811.513:50
2023-24BUF8041317+267002745.412:30
2024-25BUF81101828+1601108012.513:56
2025-26 so far
Career296306494-3019922428910.413:37

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

10 goals and 18 assists in 81 games for 28 points, plus-1, on 13:56 a night.

46.6 per cent at five-on-five, the 22nd percentile. His on-ice goals were 50-40 against an expected 34-39, which is 16 goals more than the chances at one end and 1 fewer at the other. The plus-1 is entirely borrowed.

The Finesse Game

Quick and tidy and short of anything dangerous. 80 shots in 81 games and 10 goals, and the 12.5 per cent rate is well above what he has managed before.

The passing is the better half and 18 assists is a fair total for the minutes. There is no rush game and no deception; he wins the puck back and gives it to somebody who can do something with it.

The Physical Game

6 feet and 188, and light. He is willing on the forecheck and loses more board battles than he wins.

60 penalty minutes in 81 games is a high total for a fourth-line centre of this size. Some of it is competitiveness and a good deal of it is a man reaching after being beaten.

The Intangibles

The other piece in the Jack Eichel trade, which is an unfair comparison and an unavoidable one. He has been given four seasons of NHL ice time and has produced 28 points at his best.

At 24 the projection is a fourth-line centre. The club has a genuine decision to make about whether the minutes are better spent on somebody younger.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 958 minutes

Expected goals
46.6%
23rd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
49.9%
51st pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 50 for, 40 against. Expected: 33.7 and 38.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
41st
Numbers
23rd

The 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 357 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 71 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 · 958 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 46.6% — 1.3 below the club he did it on.
The role
Fourth line, 958 minutes at five-on-five — 55th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Owen Power48.5%45.5%47.8%
Bowen Byram50.1%44.8%48.1%
Rasmus Dahlin49.5%45.2%53.9%

48.5% together, 45.5% for him apart and 47.8% for Power apart. He was worse away from Power, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Power did.

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

137 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 24 feet. 31% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 28% from beyond forty.