Boston Bruins
“There’s a lot of guys who are playing tight. But not him.”
Marco Sturm needed someone to make a play.
The Bruins’ offense wasn’t as dormant as the Red Sox’ bats down in the Bronx on Tuesday.
But with the final minutes ticking away in regulation, Boston needed a jolt amid a 0-0 deadlock with the New York Rangers.
In most cases last year, that spark was generated from Boston’s usual conduits of offense like David Pastrnak (100 points), Morgan Geekie (39 goals), or Pavel Zacha (30 goals).
But in Boston’s first game of the 2026-27 season, it was 22-year-old Fraser Minten who made his presence felt in crunch time.
With less than four minutes left in regulation, Minten took a backhand feed from Mason Lohrei and crossed over the blue line.
The man to beat? One of the top netminders in the world, Igor Shesterkin.
With Rangers blueliner Adam Fox in front of him (and serving as a potential screen against his own netminder), Minten saw an opportunity to uncork a shot.
“I saw kind of underneath Fox’s stick, so I thought it might be a little harder to pick it up for the goalie,” Minten noted. “And then just tried to get it up high.”
Minten’s shot was true; he wristed the puck over Shesterkin’s blocker to give Boston a lead it would not relinquish in an eventual 3-0 win.
For Sturm, Minten’s late-game heroics don’t come as a surprise, even while the young pivot is only entering his second full year in the NHL ranks.
“He’s just one of those guys,” Sturm noted. “You look down — it’s a 0-0 hockey game, and it’s five minutes left. And a young guy like him, he wants to be out there. You know, it’s not everyone — I can tell you that. There’s a lot of guys who are playing tight.
“But not him. So I think it just all comes together. I’m just very happy [with] how he has developed so far since he’s here, but he’s not done yet. But he definitely came with a little bit of swagger this season.”
The success of the 2026-27 Bruins will undoubtedly be rooted in how franchise stalwarts like Pastrnak, Jeremy Swayman, and Charlie McAvoy produce in their expected roles.
But Sturm and the Bruins are also playing the long game in trying to cultivate a sustainable contender for 2027, 2028, and beyond.
That only becomes a tangible result if younger players start pulling on the rope and asserting themselves as lineup fixtures and foundational building blocks in their own right.
Minten stands at the forefront of that next wave of talent — as evidenced by the seven-year, $50.4 million contract Boston handed him earlier this fall.
And, after emerging as a trusted player in Sturm’s forward corps last season, Minten’s potential ascension as a top-six talent could be the most impactful validation for the Bruins team — a team looking to prove that this retool is taking positive steps forward.
At this point, Minten’s two-way acumen and floor as a reliable third-line center have been well-established. But the Vancouver product has seemingly already overshot those initial projections, tallying 17 goals and 35 points in just his first season with Boston.
The true determinant in whether Minten can elevate his profile as a top-six regular will be the growth of his offensive game — with Tuesday’s snipe a promising first step.
“For the first game, yeah,” Minten said with a smile when asked whether or not he feels like his offensive game is ready to ramp up. “But we’ll see how it goes going forward … You feel more comfortable with some reads, and know when you can kind of — not cheat — but go for offense and when to cover and when to be smart.”
Minten’s first task this season will be to drive play next to another pair of younger skaters in James Hagens and Marat Khusnutdinov. But it wouldn’t come as much of a surprise if Minten is eventually moved to Boston’s top line next to Pastrnak.
A generational offensive talent like Pastrnak tends to generate scoring chances with just about any player stapled to his line.
But the new Bruins captain was arguably at his best last season when skating next to a younger pivot in Minten. In the 288 minutes of 5-on-5 reps during which Pastrnak and Minten skated together on the same line last season, the Bruins outscored opponents 22-7.
Count Pastrnak — who skated with JJ Peterka and Elias Lindholm on Tuesday — among those impressed with what he saw from Boston’s younger crop of talent out of the gate.
“Proud of the way we were patient, and then eventually today — it was the young guys stepping up, and it was beautiful to see,” Pastrnak said Tuesday. “Obviously, we are very happy. Great goal, great shot, and overall, I think they played really well from the first shift, right away.
“They played in the O-zone and set the tempo for themselves. Happy with the way they played, they didn’t make any mistakes, which is kind of unusual for the young guys. It was fun to see.”
Minten took another encouraging first step Tuesday in his ongoing efforts to develop into a franchise fixture with Boston.
It’s an endeavor that could determine just how fruitful this Bruins retool really is in the coming years.
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