Boston Bruins
“Oh man, he’s silky. I’m glad he’s on our team now.”
JJ Peterka lit the lamp in his first game with the Bruins. (Photo by: Barry Chin/Globe Staff)
September 30, 2026 | 9:33 AM
3 minutes to read
TD Garden roared with approval as JJ Peterka raised his hands in triumph.
But as Boston’s goal horn once again bellowed throughout the Bruins’ barn, Marco Sturm remained stoic amid the revelry around him.
Peterka’s highlight-reel first tally with the Bruins might have electrified Boston’s fans in the team’s season-opening victory against the Rangers. But for Sturm, it came as little surprise to see Peterka perform some offensive-zone wizardry with the puck on his stick.
“That’s why we got him, right?” Sturm said of Peterka’s contributions on Tuesday night.
In his first game with the Bruins, Peterka helped validate some of the belief that Boston had in the 24-year-old winger when it pried him out of Utah for a pair of first-round picks in June.
On a team that’s short on established high-end speed and skill beyond David Pastrnak, Peterka looked like a welcome remedy on Tuesday — pulling a proverbial rabbit out of a hat with a series of dekes and dangles en route to an impressive third-period tally.
Peterka’s goal punctuated a 3-0 win for the Bruins, offering plenty of promise for a Bruins team that needs more offensive firepower beyond Pastrnak if it wants to see this retool through.
“It was nasty. That was a really nice goal,” Fraser Minten said of Peterka. “He’s got sick hands, sick skills.”
After Minten broke a 0-0 deadlock with a snipe past Igor Shesterkin with 3:46 left in regulation, Peterka provided the coup de grace just 52 seconds later.
Crossing over the blue line with the puck on his stick, Peterka put his deep arsenal of O-zone skill to good use. He slipped the puck through the legs of New York defenseman Braden Schneider with a quick dangle — carving out a clear path toward Shesterkin.
Peterka didn’t hesitate, snapping a quick wrister that sailed through Shesterkin’s five-hole to double Boston’s lead.
“Oh man, he’s silky,” Jeremy Swayman said of Peterka. “I’m glad he’s on our team now. That’s a goalscorer’s goal. And just the whole way it developed. Obviously, the crowd is still buzzing from the first [goal], and he just knew he had a job to do. So that’s a ton of credit to him, and shows what kind of player he can be.”
That type of player is one that the Bruins paid a premium for this offseason, with Boston in desperate need of another uber-skilled player to either staple to Pastrnak’s line, or drive play with another group of forwards.
That speed and skill were put on display throughout Tuesday’s game against the Rangers, with Boston’s top line of Peterka, Pastrnak, and Elias Lindholm generating several quality looks — especially off the rush.
Granted, the 2026-27 Bruins aren’t a team necessarily equipped to be a run-and-gun offense, but Peterka’s speed was also evident when it came to winning foot races for loose pucks behind the net or on skittering biscuits bouncing along the half wall.
Those sequences may not be as flashy as Peterka’s first tally with Boston. But adding that type of speed in the Bruins’ top-six unit could make a world of a difference when it comes to extending O-zone time and tilting ice in the Bruins’ favor.
“I think we tried to look for each other a lot today,” Peterka said of playing alongside Pastrnak. “He’s playing with so much speed, so much poise with the puck. … I think speed, speed in transition, also in zone [with] keeping possession, making a lot of plays, and I think it’s just exciting overall. I think whenever we’re out there, we can make something happen.”
In some respects, a game like Tuesday’s would have spelled doom for last year’s Bruins club.
Even though Swayman routinely bailed out Boston down one end of the ice, a game where Pastrnak, Pavel Zacha, or Morgan Geekie didn’t light the lamp wouldn’t exactly bode well for Boston’s chances of escaping with a point or two.
But on Tuesday, the Bruins received their first two tallies from a 22-year-old ascending talent in Minten — and a player seemingly poised to elevate Boston’s offensive personnel in 2026-27 and beyond in Peterka.
If it’s a sign of things to come, the Bruins’ hopes of being an ascending power in a reworked Eastern Conference start to become a lot more tangible.
“As a new guy on a new team in a new city, playing at home, you want to be good — you want to be the guy,” Sturm said of Peterka. “And I think that part was really nice, too, because he scored at the right time, and I think he showed everyone that, you know, [you] got me here for a reason. So hopefully it helps moving forward.”
Conor Ryan is a staff writer covering the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox for Boston.com, a role he has held since 2023.
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