Peterka signed a five-year contract after being acquired by the Utah Mammoth.

• Player Overview
• Comparables
• Final Analysis

The Utah Mammoth signed winger J.J. Peterka to a five-year contract, after acquiring the forward from the Buffalo Sabres. Peterka’s contract carries a $7.7 million cap hit.

Below, we take a look at what kind of value the Mammoth are getting with the contract.

Player Overview

Selected 34th overall by the Buffalo Sabres in the 2020 NHL Draft, J.J. Peterka spent an additional year in Europe after being drafted, before making the jump to North America for the 2021-22 season. Upon coming overseas, Peterka spent a year with the AHL’s Rochester Americans, where he produced at a near point-per-game rate.

Since joining the Sabres, Peterka’s production has steady risen across his three NHL seasons. This past year, Peterka posted 28 goals and 68 points in 77 games, ranking second amongst the Sabres’ forwards in points.

However, trade speculation surrounding Peterka started flying at the end of the season, and the winger was dealt to the Utah Mammoth ahead of the draft. At just 23 years old, Peterka possesses the high-end talent to be a game-changer for Utah over the next half-decade. The winger is a great skater with high-end puck control and agility, and the ability to be both a huge scoring and playmaking threat. It’s highly likely that we’ll see him take another step forward with the Mammoth next season.

Comparables

Below, we examine how Peterka’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 Peterka now 23 years old, the comparables used will generally be forwards who were near his age in the first year of their contract. Note: ages listed in the table are based on a player’s age by Dec. 31 in the first year of their contract.

5 YEARS

A five-year contract isn’t typically seen for wingers coming off their entry-level contracts, but there are some examples of forwards doing so over the last half-decade.

The table below uses a system of establishing a cost-per-points basis, using the middle ground between a player’s production over their signing year, and over their career. From there, a comparable player’s cap hit from the first year of their contract is applied to a $95.5M salary cap using the same percentage against the salary cap, and a payment rate can be established based on how much the player was paid compared to their production. Each contract can then project how much Peterka could’ve been expected to make, based on the same cost-per-points basis.

Due to the lack of sample size of wingers around Peterka’s age taking a five-year deal, centers have been included in the comps above as well. Aside from one outlier at the top with Auston Matthews, and one outlier at the bottom in Jake Guentzel, all six of the other comps would have projected a five-year contract for Peterka to come in between $7.55M and $8.75M.

Of course, considering so many players of these comps are centers, it’s a little tough to figure out Peterka’s value within this range. That said, given centers will generally get paid at a bit of a premium compared to wingers, we can probably expect his value wasn’t going to be towards the upper end of the range.

Wyatt Johnston’s deal at a $7.55M projection for Peterka also came in lower than would’ve been projected (with the state tax factor likely coming into play). As a result, there’s certainly an argument that Peterka’s value could’ve potentially reached $8M per year, as projected by a lot of the comps on the table.

So at the very least, Peterka’s $7.7M cap hit represents fair value on a five-year deal, and possibly even slightly cheaper than expected.

While Peterka signed a five-year deal, below is a look at what he could’ve potentially made on a shorter or longer deal.

3 YEARS

If Peterka took a three-year bridge deal, his cap hit would’ve come in lower than the $7.7M mark. The four winger comparables below who signed prior to Peterka would have projected a three-year deal for the winger to be between $6.05M and $7.33M per year.

That said, the Matthew Tkachuk contract represents a bit of an outlier, with the other three comps all projecting a deal between $6.05M and $6.64M per year. So it’s more likely that a three-year deal for Peterka would’ve come in somewhere between this range.

8 YEARS

If Peterka signed an eight-year deal (via sign-and-trade), his cap hit would’ve been higher than the $7.7M that he signed for at five years. Aside from one outlier on the low end (Dylan Guenther) and one comp on the high end (Juraj Slafkovsky), the five other comps would’ve projected an eight-year contract for Peterka to be between $8.23M and $10M per year.

At the same time, Seth Jarvis, who’s the second-lowest comp on the table, also had deferred salary on his deal. If the total salary had been factored into the eight-year deal (at a total value of $63.2M), Jarvis’ cap hit would have been $7.9M instead of $7.4M. This cap hit when adjusted to a $95.5M salary cap would have projected Peterka to be at $8.86M on the same cost-per-points basis, rather than the $8.23M on the table. As a result, the majority of comps would have projected Peterka close to, or above $9M per year.

Especially with the Cole Caufield and Andrei Svechnikov deals projecting a defined range of around $9.25M per year for Peterka, an eight-year deal for the winger would have been very likely to come in above $9M per year.

Final Analysis

A $7.7M cap hit represents fair value for Peterka on a five-year deal, with some comps projecting that he could’ve came in slightly above that mark. The deal also sets up the winger to be an unrestricted free agent at 28 years old in 2030, where he could end up being in line for an even bigger payday.

If Peterka had signed a three-year bridge deal, his value likely would’ve been somewhere between $6M and $6.5M per year. Meanwhile, an eight-year contract for Peterka likely would’ve landed at $9M or above.