There are many questions facing the Buffalo Sabres this offseason. Of those questions, none is more important than what the future holds for winger JJ Peterka.
The talented forward has been the subject of trade speculation this spring. In addition, Peterka’s name has also been prominently mentioned among potential offer sheet candidates. The uncertainty of what the 2025-26 holds for Peterka contains only one answer for Buffalo: he must be retained.
Peterka is a scoring winger who has delivered sixty-seven goals over his first three seasons in Buffalo. At 23 years of age, the future is bright for the native of Munich. In the closing weeks of the 2024-25 season, Peterka began to embrace the style of play that Sabres’ head coach Lindy Ruff has been working to implement.
“The way he wanted us to play is just compete,” Peterka said. “ I think that’s a thing we learned pretty late in the season when we actually started playing really good hockey. When everyone is buying in on the compete part, we can be a much better hockey team.”
Peterka is poised to build on last season’s career high of 68 points. He has put up a vast maturity of his points at even strength. Of his sixty-eight points mark in 24-25, only eighteen of those points came with the man advantage. Peterka helped the Sabres record the sixth-highest even-strength goal total in the NHL last season.
His scoring ability should also help an under-performing Sabres power play. Peterka’s skill set should garner him more opportunities to convert when Buffalo has the extra man next season. Another year of continued growth is ahead for the young sniper. Last summer, Buffalo chose to buy out the remaining three years of scoring winger Jeff Skinner’s contract. The move created available cap space, which they failed to utilize to acquire a forward to replace Skinner’s goal output.
A trade scenario is unlikely to bring Peterka’s value back to Buffalo in the transaction. So many times in recent years the Sabres have made moves from a position of weakness. Giving up the best players in many deals. If another organization signs Peterka to an offer sheet, the contract must be matched. The draft pick compensation coming back to Buffalo from the offer sheet would not help an organization that must move forward next season.
The Sabres simply cannot allow Peterka’s production and promise to exit.
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