Returning regular · 2025-26
Justin Danforth
Buffalo Sabres · RW · — shot · age 33 at the dated snapshot.
- Team
- BUF
- Lane
- RW
- Age
- 33
Production and deployment
How the points were built
Official NHL 2025–26 regular-season reports. A missing split stays “—”; it is never converted to zero.
Organizational context
2 RW regulars in BUF
The all-team median is 3.5. BUF’s farm system ranks #9 in the maintained two-board consensus.
Questions a GM still has to answer
- How much of the scoring comes at five-on-five, on special teams, or into an empty net?
- Is the player creating the play, finishing it, or receiving a secondary point?
- Does deployment reveal trust, scarcity, underuse, or a role the roster cannot offer?
- What contract, acquisition cost, development alternative and Cup-window effect complete the argument?
Tonight
BUF do not play today
League schedule for 2026-09-29; next league date 2026-09-30.
Listed: Out For Season (kneecap), listed since 2025-10-15, expected back 2026-09-15.
White noise · as of 2026-09-29 · social 2026-09-29
Justin Danforth is quiet (18th percentile); attention this week is 2.08× his usual
How much he is being talked about: the league's own stories tagged to him, daily pageviews of his Wikipedia article against his own 90-day baseline, posts naming him on the connected networks (Bluesky), and the roster moves and listings that make noise. A measure of attention. Whether it affects a player is his business, and a question the history will let us test later.
Social: 1 post named him this week on Bluesky · 1 likes, reposts and replies · no baseline yet, it needs a week of readings.
Contract · BUF
Cap hit not published
2026–27 through 2026–27 · UFA at expiry. Unknown
From the video · model judgement
What the condensed games showed
Read from the league's free condensed games (1 game so far): entries, exits, battles and turnovers the model could see and attribute to his jersey number. A condensed game is a sample of the game, so these are observations, not season counts.
Most often up against: O. Pickering (3), J. Blomqvist (1).
Career arc · era-adjusted points per 82 games
Justin Danforth, season by season
Each dot is one season. The amber bar is what his earlier seasons and his age predicted for that season (80% band), so a dot far above its bar is a season the numbers did not see coming. The shaded band is where most players at his position sit at each age.
Position band: quantile regression (10th/50th/90th) of qualifying seasons on an age spline, weighted for players who drop out.
What the numbers found
No shipped label applies. A label is a measured finding about a run of seasons (for example, a spike that came back to the old level), and it is shown only for label types that passed their test on held-out seasons.
Projection at the draft
No draft projection: projections exist for players drafted from 2005 on who have season lines on file.
Every season
| Season | Age | GP | Level | Expected (80%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | 28 | 45 | 23.3 | 12.4 to 71.8 |
| 2022-23 | 29 | 6 | 37.1 | −10.3 to 58.2 |
| 2023-24 | 30 | 71 | 27.8 | 4.5 to 41.9 |
| 2024-25 | 31 | 61 | 26.7 | 7.3 to 39.0 |
| 2025-26 | 32 | 4 | 0.0 | −17.4 to 61.5 |
Source: CapOrCup careers desk (method and league curves) · as of 2026-09-29
Comparables at the same age
Who looked like this at 28 to 32
Careers are compared as league-adjusted points per game by age, over the same ages. The comparables below are the closest lines, and what matters is the spread of what they did next, not any single name.
This player so far: age 18 OJHL 0.77 → age 19 OJHL 1.20 → age 20 OJHL 1.30 → age 21 NCAA 0.81 → age 22 NCAA 0.58 → age 23 NCAA 1.14 → age 24 NCAA 0.86 → age 25 AHL 0.33 → age 26 Liiga 0.88 → age 27 Liiga 1.07 → age 28 KHL 0.95 → age 29 NHL 0.31 → age 31 NHL 0.37 → age 32 NHL 0.34
| Player | Distance (lower is closer) | What he did afterwards |
|---|---|---|
| Taylor HallL · matched at ages 28, 29, 31, 32 | 0.16 | age 33 NHL 0.52 → age 34 NHL 0.60 |
| Casey CizikasC · matched at ages 28, 29, 31, 32 | 0.17 | age 33 NHL 0.33 → age 34 NHL 0.21 → age 35 NHL 0.22 |
| Jason ZuckerL · matched at ages 28, 29, 31, 32 | 0.17 | age 33 NHL 0.73 → age 34 NHL 0.73 |
| Lars EllerC · matched at ages 28, 29, 31, 32 | 0.17 | age 33 NHL 0.27 → age 34 NHL 0.38 → age 35 NHL 0.41 → age 36 NHL 0.22 |
| Nic DowdC · matched at ages 28, 29, 31, 32 | 0.20 | age 33 NHL 0.34 → age 34 NHL 0.33 → age 35 NHL 0.29 |
| Noel AcciariC · matched at ages 28, 29, 31, 32 | 0.20 | age 33 NHL 0.15 → age 34 NHL 0.37 |
| Alex BelzileR · matched at ages 28, 29, 31, 32 | 0.21 | age 33 AHL 0.39 → age 34 AHL 0.43 |
| Brandon TanevL · matched at ages 28, 29, 31, 32 | 0.21 | age 33 NHL 0.28 → age 34 NHL 0.05 |
Reading it
If most comparables became NHL regulars and their later peak sits well above this player's current line, the numbers say there is room to grow. If most did not, the numbers say the odds are against it. Either way it is what the data shows, not a name chosen to flatter.
Goal archive ·
Every goal, with the league's video
Preseason, regular season and playoffs are kept apart. Each row links to the NHL's own highlight page; no video is hosted here. Where a clip has been reviewed, the reading of it is a model judgement of the frames, not a measurement.
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Club listings · licensed feeds
What the club lists him as
An injury listing and a projected slot are the club's statements relayed by a licensed feed, shown with their dates. CapOrCup infers nothing from them.
Injury listing · Out For Season (kneecap), listed since 2025-10-15, expected back 2026-09-15 (as of 2026-09-29; Sportradar NHL API v7, league injuries feed)
Availability
Games missed
The NHL publishes no injury feed. This counts games his club played while he did not dress, for any reason: injury, illness, a healthy scratch, a suspension or a trade gap. No cause is claimed.
Either side of that absence: 0 points per 60 in the ten games before, 1.75 in the ten after. A rate change over a small sample, not evidence of a lingering injury.
NHL EDGE tracking · 2025-26
Speed, shot and ice
From the NHL's own player-tracking data. Percentiles are the NHL's: the share of the league below this player.