Zucker signed an extension to remain in Buffalo.

• Player Overview
• Comparables
• Final Analysis

The Buffalo Sabres re-signed forward Jason Zucker last week, agreeing to a two-year contract at a $4.75M cap hit. The deal kicks in for the 2025-26 season and carries a limited no-trade clause.

Below, we take examine how the deal looks for the Buffalo Sabres, and whether they’re getting fair value.

Player Overview

From the time he was selected in the 2010 NHL Draft, Jason Zucker spent nearly a decade with the Minnesota Wild. Becoming a regular member of the forward group in 2014, Zucker grew his role over the following years to emerge as a key winger with the team, before reaching career highs with 33 goals and 64 points during the 2017-18 season.

Zucker was eventually shipped to the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2020, where he remained for three and a half seasons. With the Penguins, Zucker’s offense slipped at times, and he wasn’t always able to produce at as high of a rate as his last few years in Minnesota.

Then after departing the Penguins in 2023, Zucker bounced around a little bit. He signed a one-year deal with the Arizona Coyotes, before being dealt to the Nashville Predators at the trade deadline a year ago for only a sixth-round pick.

But after joining the Sabres on another one-year contract last summer, Zucker saw a resurgence.

Across 56 games this season, the winger has scored 18 goals and 44 points, which ranks top-five on the team in both categories. Given the Sabres’ position this season, it could be argued that Zucker should’ve been dealt at the deadline for future assets, rather than being re-signed. But with Buffalo still desperately trying to get back to the playoffs, keeping Zucker around does help their chances in the coming years.

Comparables

Below, we examine how Zucker’s deal compares to recent contracts for other forwards. For more information on the stats/tables used below, including how the payment rate in projections is determined, visit the About the Site page.

With Zucker now 33 years old, the comparables used will generally be wingers who were near his age in the first year of their contract, with select centers included as well. Note: ages listed in the table are based on a player’s age by Dec. 31 in the first year of their contract.

2 YEARS

Based on contracts for comparable wingers of a similar age, a two-year deal for Zucker came in right in line with expectations. Comps from 2021 onwards are shown on the table below.

Between the nine comps above, they would’ve projected a two-year deal for Zucker to be between $3.65M on the low end, and $6.56M on the high end. At the same time, the two highest projections from the contracts for Nick Foligno and Tomas Tatar were the only contracts from before 2022 on the table, and the two lowest comps were for Adam Henrique, who pretty clearly took below market value to re-sign in Edmonton, and Viktor Arvidsson, who was coming off an injury-plagued season in which he only played 18 regular season games.

The other five comps all would’ve had Zucker between $4.35M and $5.47M per year. Specifically within that group, we see some pretty realistic comps between Jordan Eberle, David Perron and Vladimir Tarasenko, with their contracts projecting Zucker at $5.35M, $4.9M and $4.5M respectively. All of those players also had a relatively similar production mid-point to Zucker, between their signing year stats and career stats.

Even looking at the actual cap hits (pre-adjustment), all of Tatar, Backlund, Eberle, Perron and Tarasenko signed for either $4.5M or $4.75M on their respective two-year contracts. So there’s a very recent precedent of comps signing for the same range.

Final Analysis

With Zucker coming off back-to-back one-year deals, going after a bit more term on his extension made sense from a security aspect. Perhaps a one-year deal could’ve warranted a higher cap hit, but the likelihood of replicating his numbers this season (where he’s on pace for one of his highest points-per-82 paces of his career) would’ve been relatively unlikely.

With several comps projecting a two-year deal for Zucker between a range from $4.35M and $5.5M, and about five recent contracts all being signed for an identical, or very similar cap hit, a $4.75M cap hit for Zucker on a two-year deal is fair value for the Sabres.