Why the Boston Bruins Bet Big on JJ Peterka | Ep. 154

0:00 Speaker 1: Can you start a podcast with me?

0:02 Speaker 2: Please?

0:03 Speaker 1: I need something to do.

0:13 Speaker 2: I Jack sending out a troup of bucking to say, today, here's a chance pop fa right down with goalie Scars.

0:22 Speaker 1: Oh my one a move by the rookie too on one plaster not moving in it to oil dances in podcast home right away corner faster Chester.

0:40 Speaker 2: What is that for? Most? Welcome in everyone to another episode of Bruin's Tape to Tape. I'm your host today, Caroline with a K, and I am excited to welcome in my fantastic co host Maria from Watertown.

1:02 Speaker 1: Hey Maria, Hello, Hi Caroline. What's happening today?

1:07 Speaker 2: Just enjoying the dog days of summer. It's almost over, which is just shocking to me.

1:13 Speaker 1: I know, yeah, we've had great weather, but it's gone a little too quickly, and that's why we have gathered to talk about our Boston Bruins.

1:22 Speaker 2: Yes, we're continuing our summer series on players, and we're doing a player profile on recently acquired winger JJ Peterca has a little bit of a background in how he came to the Boston Bruins.

1:36 Speaker 1: The twenty four year old was actually.

1:38 Speaker 2: Part of a late trade deal right around the draft, which is funny because the Utah Mammoth actually traded for him a year prior, and they spent one year with.

1:53 Speaker 1: Him and decided to move on.

1:56 Speaker 2: And so the Boston Bruins sent its twenty twenty six first round pick in the draft, so number twenty three, and a twenty twenty first round pick that belonged to the Florida Panthers, which the Bruins did acquire in the Brad Marsh and trade back in twenty twenty five. The Florida pick is top ten per protected. Thinking about that, if Peterka does become a bit of a something, maybe we didn't give Brad away for just.

2:23 Speaker 1: A bad thing. It's certainly better than the value of that draft pick. Yes, and I might go off in a little bit of a tangent here, but it's a bird in hand. I will take a proven an HL player over the unknown of a draft pick that's not your number one, because those guys are gonna take forever. There's too much unknown there. And I've heard enough experts say this about the hell with the draft picks. If you can trade a draft pick again, unless you're not going to give away Connor Berdard James Hagen's that's okay.

2:59 Speaker 1: I'm removing the players from the equation, folkses if you can take and try to pick for a known commodity, I'm doing that every day, all day. And this kid's only twenty four, right, Yeah.

3:12 Speaker 2: Before we dive into who this guy is, I just want to say, for the record, when it looked like Victor Arvidson was not coming back, and this was prior to the July one free agency start, I definitely made a comment in saying, if they're not signing Victor Arvidson, this must mean they are looking for somebody who can fill a similar role, with a similar style of play, who is probably younger and sure enough in comes JJ Peterca Now, I am very excited about this particular player, Maria. I'm expecting a full on Golden Retriever out there with his speed and excitement to play.

3:56 Speaker 1: I'm expecting a pit bull.

4:00 Speaker 2: He was drafted in twenty twenty. He was number thirty four overall by Buffalo, who, shockingly, under the leadership quote unquote of Kevin Adams, did have great success in drafting and finding excellent talent. I will give them that, but once again, like many players who spent their beginning years in Buffalo never got traction, but likely because of all of those things, he ended up being treated to Utah. Now, this is a guy, as Elite Prospects said, has an unrelenting.

4:37 Speaker 1: Moose hoping you would get to Yeah, he is hard on every puck. He is eager and willing to fight.

4:43 Speaker 2: And he has a disruptive streak in him.

4:47 Speaker 1: He's been called a real pain in the ass. And I'm sure cam Neely does have his fingerprints on this team. As we've said it once, we've said it twice. He has come out and said that he wants this Bruins team basically to be a nightmare to play against. Now, yes, it hasn't fully translated as yet, we're starting to see the assembly of that. Now one might ask the question, which is a logical question to ask, why would the Utah Mammoth trade this kid? Sure, why would they trade him? So some of the speculation is that his performance in Utah didn't match or didn't meet the expectations a top six contract on the team, and management wanted to clear space for incoming young players.

5:41 Speaker 2: Yes, and I think on the surface, I think that is a very valid point to make.

5:46 Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm just saying one would ask a question right now because you've got a young kid who went relatively high in the draft, projected in the manner that you just spoke about in the twenty twenty NHL Draft and quite hasn't met those standards yet. But again it could be. And we've talked about this with other players, right the system, the structure, the role, the assemblance of the team as a whole in another organization may not be suited to what you're expected to do as a top player prospect.

6:23 Speaker 2: And keep in mind he started his NHL career on those particular teams. And unless you are some superhuman like a Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid maclin Celebrini, you're gonna need a little time to cook and grow.

6:42 Speaker 1: And does Utah have a David Pasternak on your team? They have a higher degree of across the board talent than Buffalo certainly has had.

6:52 Speaker 2: But my biggest takeaway is that in spite of a let's call it a statistically rest season last year in Utah, he did have two excellent seasons in Buffalo and let me just say a statistically depressed season for JJ Pitterca last year, he still scored twenty five goals, forty seven points with a plus six finish and a five point two points share.

7:18 Speaker 1: Okay, so that's nothing to hoopoo about. I really like the twenty five goals.

7:23 Speaker 2: Yes, he's a dynamic, controlled zone entry winger who can turn defensive structure into immediate offense. He's the type of player whose success won't actually primarily be measured by whether he scores twenty five thirty five, forty five goals. It's going to be whether he becomes the player who can consistently turn the Bruins neutral zone stops into controlled entries and rush chances. And what is the style of play that we have talked about that Marco Sturm is pushing his players to execute on stopping things in the neutral zone, not with a trap.

8:00 Speaker 2: Remember we love Trapp's cousin the one two two, which is forcing other teams to make mistakes and then when they make those mistakes, pouncing on that puck, transitioning and rushing in JJ Peterca. When I say I expect a Golden Retriever style of play, he might not be the one who necessarily forces the error by the opposing team, but the second he sees it, because of his speed, his hockey IQ and his incredible shooting mentality, he's gonna see it like a dog because he's a frisbee and he's like, let's go.

8:37 Speaker 2: And that is what gets me excited about seeing a player like him, because we now have him also for a number of seasons.

8:47 Speaker 1: He's young, he's going to.

8:49 Speaker 2: Learn a ton and even though his ability to contribute on the Mammoth team was not as great as his ability to contribute on the Buffet, Remember, the Buffalo team was more reliant on him to.

9:04 Speaker 1: Do things as opposed to Utah.

9:07 Speaker 2: Across the board, his shooting percentage remained extremely high and consistent. So his ability to contribute to chances.

9:19 Speaker 1: Suggests that if he's just.

9:22 Speaker 2: In an environment where that is the style of play, he will continue to score those goals. He will continue to make those plays, and that is very exciting for me. We need speed, we need someone who's got that get up and go and will not slow down, and we need.

9:41 Speaker 1: That balance in scoring. That was a perpetual and somewhat it became more so towards the end of the season when it came down to do or die, but the secondary scoring became extremely problematic for the bian best seasons. I think it's a little too early to project where peterka is gonna be what line, But I'm I would venture to guess that I was saying too. Yeah, that's what I would say too.

10:09 Speaker 2: And to your point, that lack of balance scoring, the lack of defined roles.

10:16 Speaker 1: Specific jobs.

10:18 Speaker 2: We've said before, really successful teams have all of their players with their very specific job, right, and you've got David Pasternach, winger, elite offensive creator, that is his job. Okay, player extraordinaire, geeky, excellent finisher. We saw that even when he was going through his rough patches, he was there. He was doing what he was supposed to be doing it just the hockey gods weren't allowing those pucks in. It's not like he just stopped playing Casey Middlestat. He's an excellent possession, playmaking center, Fraser Minton, very responsible two way center.

10:54 Speaker 2: He's, as we have talked about him, he's not the next David Cragie, but he's bringing that kind of energy and approach to his game and so with the departure of Arvidson, he was the transition winger, but he was entering his mid thirties, and here we have a twenty four year old.

11:12 Speaker 1: Who's locked up until he's twenty eight. He becomes a UFA at the age of twenty eight. What year is that, twenty thirty.

11:21 Speaker 2: Because of this, Boston didn't have any other consistent winger who could just explode through that neutral zone with the puck. And that is quite literally Peterka's calling card. This is what he is known for. And I think that this was a very smart acquisition.

11:38 Speaker 1: And that's the part of Ardvudson's game that I know I came to really respect and enjoy and admire because he was relentless and as disappointing as it was when he moved on, I'm not quite sure I still understand why we couldn't match what he got, other than you wanted to move on to the younger model.

12:01 Speaker 2: But Sturm really wants to have a very nimble Boston Bruins team. And that doesn't necessarily mean that, oh, they need to be literally faster. You can still be quite nimble and fast without having that literal speed. But it doesn't hurt to have that, especially in someone who has the ability to just pick up on plays and go. His style does not lend itself to a more steady, measured style of play. He's not gonna be the best at creating offense or generating offense, and that's okay. That doesn't have to be his job.

12:42 Speaker 2: We have solid centers who can do that. We have David Pasternock who could get blood out of a stone. His job is going to be very specific, and with his youth and his speed and his fearlessness, I think we are going to see Boston get better and better at the rush and at that transition game. Last year, one of the biggest improvements that we saw was their commitment to staying above the puck and limiting those odd man rushes, and that comes from Storm's plan, his approach. It's almost like, I really hope that Storm isn't a transition coach because personally I really enjoy his style that he wants to have the players do because it's exciting.

13:26 Speaker 2: Right, how many times in the last fifteen years have we seen, oh my god, the world's most boring hockey out of this team. What he is trying to get out of his players. Is a very exciting brand of hockey. And so if you bring in a kid like this and then you've got someone who also has that shoot first mentality and will take advantage of those opportunities, I think we will start to see some of that secondary scoring.

13:52 Speaker 1: Dear God, we have to see that.

13:54 Speaker 2: And he's young enough that he's still developing. He can learn earn how to become a more well rounded player as well. Storm is not afraid to sit and scratch players. It doesn't matter who you are. We've seen him do that. We saw him do that with Mason Laura when he and so he's going to have to learn some new skills. If peterca can buy in, because how many times last year did we hear Storm talk about, well, we got to make sure people are buying in. As long as he buys in into the concepts of the reload, the puck support, back pressure, neutral zone transitioning, and he's following through, then Storm will reward him with more and more responsibility.

14:42 Speaker 1: And there's that Homeland connection. Then there is the Kevin Adams connection. Kevin Adams has recently been brought on by the Bruins organization as a quote unquote special assistant to Tom Sweeney. I don't know if that means this guy could be coming in to take your job, Donnie if things don't work out good. But god, oh, but Kevin had familiarity with Yes Petka in Buffalo. He was part of the group that drafted him. Sure so.

15:15 Speaker 2: And there's another assistant coach who also coached Peterca in Salzburg in Germany, So he's got a lot of connections to Boston. What are you going to be looking for with a player like this? What are your expectations? Keeping in mind he's all of twenty four years old, so how much of his decision making can we truly rely on to be.

15:39 Speaker 1: Excellent all the time? Well, i'd be in German. I mean, I think we have to have some patients, yep, because as we saw from the introduction of Marco's the whole new defensive structure, a lot of players struggled. Yes, it's very different getting on board with that. So I think we have to like temper our expectations, at least for the start of the season. I don't know that this kid is going to come in guns of blazon and just start scoring an abundance of goals, because we all know that as a member of the Boston Ruins and as a part of the Bruins roster, there is an expectation that you have some degree of defensive responsibility.

16:27 Speaker 1: Yeah, talks to bottom forwards, defenceman, goalies. Okay. What I think might be a little bit of a disservice to this kid, though, is the fact that he's coming in at a pretty big salary, coming in at a pretty big salary seven point seven eight seven point which is a tick higher than Elias Lindtelman. Honestly, bringing in this kid makes that Elias contract look even worse than it already is. This kid's twenty four. You're paying a thirty one year old seven point seventy five who can't healthy, who can't perform, who can't produce.

17:03 Speaker 1: And I've said it once, I'm gonna say it again. He's damaged goods. He's got a chronic back issue in my view, that is never going to enable him, i think, to fully meet the standard of performance that we thought we were going to get from this guy. So that's a conversation for a different day. So I'm curious to see how much of a leash. This kid will get right. Maybe he'll get a little bit more leashed than Mason Laurai did, because Mason laura has been part of the system, oh yeah, for a longer period of time.

17:39 Speaker 1: But I think we have to expect some growing pains, a little bit of growing pain. And we're gonna see growing pains too with James Hagen.

17:50 Speaker 2: Boston is about to get even younger. Two or three seasons ago, Boston was second oldest in mean, it's been Pittsburgh for a while because it's a retirement home down there. Last year they got younger, and I think they're about to get a lot younger too, And so I think the next two seasons are going to be a time full of transition because two things are happening at once. I believe we are going into phase two of that rebuild, because yes, they exceeded expectations in that first year, but they're not done.

18:25 Speaker 2: They still have to find the right personnelity and that's something that every team is always doing.

18:31 Speaker 1: They're always tweaking personnel. We're going to be talking.

18:33 Speaker 2: About the forwards in a couple of weeks and the defenceman in.

18:38 Speaker 1: Terms of who's got what roles.

18:41 Speaker 2: On this team, what roles are still vacant, because we've all seen what happens when you ask a player forward or defense to take on a role that is not a natural fit. It doesn't go well for anybody. And so I'm really hoping that what I was able to find on JJ Peterca and his mentality in the game, how he approaches the game, how he executes the game, that will transition beautifully with someone like David Pasternak, where I could see them being on the power play together. Can you imagine somebody like Victor Arvidson, but potentially faster getting out there, getting the puck, getting it up to pasta and actually finally being somebody who can play with and support him.

19:36 Speaker 2: That would be truly amazing, truly amazing. Is he our white Whale? I don't know.

19:42 Speaker 1: I can give the Bruins management credit for understanding that they needed to get a bit faster, right, They needed to get faster, They need to try and solve their secondary scoring problem. Right, they needed to be more consistent because again we fell into a trap last season. It's late in the season once again of solely relying on one line no matter how Marco mixed them all up, it was still one line that was providing an abundance of scoring. I still think there are to me questions, and we'll get into this in a future episode.

20:20 Speaker 1: We still need to figure out how to get more offensive production from our back end too. But I like the fact that they're understanding that they need to get a little younger. It's in younger and more experienced, with more proven track record type players without exclusively relying on the draft, because they want this retool to be a bit quicker. I also like the fact that they're not building a team now specifically to beat another team, one team in your own division a conference, because it blows up in your face and every other team around you has improved as well.

20:59 Speaker 1: My own only concern is the cap hit and the amount of money, because if he doesn't improve on his numbers and his stats, if that doesn't bear out, that's not going to look like a great contract down the road. Yeah.

21:14 Speaker 2: No, it's definitely expensive. So the other piece of this transition period that Boston is then moving into, in addition to continuing the growth and development of the team as a whole, into Marco's vision of how to play the game that he sees in his mind is the fact that we are probably also just a couple of years away from having a significantly younger team. If you listened to our episode on some of these prospects, we've got probably at least three young men who are going into likely their final NCAA seasons, and I full we would expect to see those guys end up in Providence shortly after their season.

22:06 Speaker 1: Ends, and then really genuinely.

22:09 Speaker 2: Entering the pipeline, possibly as soon as next season two seasons. We're talking about Dean Laturno, Will Zeller's, Chris Polosi. Like a bunch of these guys, plus you've got James Hagen's waiting in the wings and a couple of other guys who have already been doing their time in the AHL. And so what I like about bringing in someone like peterca is he's also kind of that middleman between in terms of his age and his years of experience already in the NHL, being in a place where he's going to be playing with Dare I say it, at this point Pasta is about to be really he's a veteran player at he's thirty years old, and.

22:51 Speaker 1: Someone like him he's designated as a leader on this team.

22:55 Speaker 2: Right, right, We've got this kid who already has NHL experience, so here he knows what is going on. He doesn't have to learn that aspect of playing in the NHL, and so he can learn and grow and develop in that regard by playing with guys like David Pasternak or Pavel Zaka or any of these other line mates that he's going to have because they've all been playing for longer than him, and then he will be able to serve as that mentor to these really young guys who are coming in. I can see his hiring, for lack of a better phrase, as very intentional in trying to build the next iteration of the Bruins, because we've said goodbye to that most recent golden age of Boston and they're now trying to build up this next age of the Bruins, trying to avoid creating those gigantic gaps.

23:54 Speaker 1: The threshold should be high, but just younger players, and it's not going to trans right away. It may not even translate with jj Petka until the midway point of this season. Right in terms of okay, what are we truly going to get from this player. What can we truly expect from this player? But I think we should I don't think it's unrealistic based on the age, what we've part about, what has been projected to have to set a relatively high threshold.

24:28 Speaker 2: When you're watching this team in the fall, keep an eye out on this player. See what he's doing really well. If you see him coming up the boards, watch how he enters the zone.

24:38 Speaker 1: Is it controlled?

24:39 Speaker 2: Can he transition quickly when that puck gets loose in that neutral zone? Is he aggressively grabbing it and taking it? Is he going and following whoever has the puck quickly? Is he getting into position and taking advantage of that transition and the rush? He may not necessarily be executing on it perfectly. He's got to learn how to play with these new teammates, right. That can take a little while. He's got to learn this new system. But if that is truly his calling card, as we have been led to believe based on his stats scouting reports, You're gonna see that aspect, that element immediately, because that's like his personality, that doesn't change.

25:23 Speaker 1: That's what I'm going to be keep an eye on. I'm going to watch him see who he gets put on with.

25:29 Speaker 2: I wouldn't be surprised if we see him maybe bounce in the middle a little bit like second or third as he gets familiar. But I am certainly, based on what I've seen, under the impression that they're hiring this guy specifically to take Arvidson's spot on that second line. And even if it wasn't to take Arvidson's spot, which happens to be on the second line, what I've read about him and what I've seen of this kid to me already, I would be like that, I want to see him on the second line. I'm hiring you because you're seven million, you do this.

26:01 Speaker 2: That's a second line, right.

26:03 Speaker 1: I would ask the fan base to maybe give him a little time to transition. And I think there's going to be a lot of maneuvering as it relates two lines coming up this season, because when you look at currently what the Broins website has listed as its rostery Molly, yeah, fully mo. So it's like, where are all these guys gonna eventually? You can't keep them all on the active roster. Nope, you can't keep them all on the active rosters. But I like the fact that there's going to be actual competition.

26:36 Speaker 1: Yes, you want a spot on opening day, you better freaking earn it, and a good variety to choose from.

26:43 Speaker 2: I get the sense, certainly that based on how Sturm wants to see his team play, he knows what the jobs have to be, he knows what their job openings are, and he's going to try and find the players who can be the most successful in that.

27:01 Speaker 1: And because there's a.

27:03 Speaker 2: Lot of guys to choose from, hopefully that means the right guys, the best guys, get those spots.

27:09 Speaker 1: Yep, yep.

27:10 Speaker 2: Because this Atlantic Division. We've said it time and time again, the Atlantic Division is the most competitive of all of the divisions, and it's only getting more and more insane. I've seen the roster for the Panthers and the what the halves are doing, and I'm shaking in my boots a little bit.

27:34 Speaker 1: They're not the only ones, right, They're not the only ones exactly. People are not messing around.

27:39 Speaker 2: But final thoughts, opinions, questions, concerns that you may have about Patka.

27:45 Speaker 1: Well, I don't know much about him. You've done a great job filling us in. As always, if your research and your statistics because we don't watch this Utah team, right, so we're kind of getting an unknown like what I've heard and read thus far. I like that he is young. I'm just concerned about the contract and how that is going to ultimately play out, because you do have other areas of need here. We still need a proven right shot defense. I don't Again, they don't grow on trees, but with what you have left in your projected cap space, you're not going to get them.

28:27 Speaker 1: We look for the best. We've already seen the worst. You know, we've lived it, right, we can only be that. Yeah, we can only go up. But looking down at this roster right now, does it gives me Stanley Cup playoff vibes? Yeah?

28:42 Speaker 2: Not quite yet, but yeah, but I'm not mad. So it's okay, It's okay. I'm very open minded and feeling positive.

28:49 Speaker 1: Yeah, we feel like that now.

28:50 Speaker 2: Anyways, make sure you let and subscribe for more content, and be sure to leave and reading a review. To help other Bruins fans find us. You can support the podcast by winning our Patreon or following us on our socials at Tape to Tape MK and on substack at Tape to tape, mk dot substack dot com. Final thoughts, go bees, and as always, go bes.