The Bruins woke up from their hibernation to make a draft day trade. After watching all of the other teams in the Atlantic division make blockbuster trades, the Bruins traded for 24 year old German winger JJ Peterka in exchange for a pair of first round picks. Peterka has top 6 potential with a pretty good mix of goals and assists through his career. While two firsts is a fairly high price, that is unfortunately the going price thus far this offseason.
The B’s traded their first round pick this year (number 23) and the Florida Panthers top 10 protected pick (acquired in the Brad Marchand trade) next season. Late round picks are something of a gamble, and Peterka is a somewhat known commodity. There is hope that there is another gear that Peterka can hit another gear in a similar way to Morgan Geekie. Peterka has been something of a defensive liability through his career, however that has been with the Sabres in their somewhat less productive years (every year in recent memory prior to last year) and a very “meh” Utah team last year. The Bruins forwards are always tasked with being defensively responsible, so hopefully that rubs off on him from the other forwards as well as Coach Marco Sturm.
Peterka has 4 years left at 7.7 million AAV, but the trend of the salary cap and his age makes the deal reasonable, assuming he doesn’t regress. It’s hard to call this a “buy-low” given the price but the market is what the market is, so this fits that mold.
Since the first round of the draft is complete and Pavel Zacha is still on the team, at this point my gut tells me that they’ll keep him and reassess at the deadline. Peterka has a much higher ceiling, and probably a higher floor than Casey Mittelstadt, Tanner Jeanot, and Alex Steeves, so he’s an upgrade, and ideally could play with Pastrnak on another wing, or in a best case James Hagens as his center. The top 6 forward need box for the offseason is checked but the work for the Bruins front office is nowhere near complete, especially to compete with the improving teams within the division.