Jets fall in OT to Bruins in home opener

WINNIPEG - It was a season opener unlike any the Winnipeg Jets have experienced in years.

Two players made their NHL debuts. The forward lines had a distinctly different look. And, for the first time in more than a decade, Connor Hellebuyck wasn’t the man between the pipes to start the season.

There was plenty of newness inside Canada Life Centre on Friday night — and plenty to watch as the Jets opened the 2026-27 season against the Boston Bruins.

The Bruins played the role of spoiler, tying the game late in the third before JJ Peterka scored 3:21 into overtime to give Boston a 4-3 win.

"I like a lot of what we did. There's mistakes, but we came out strong," said Connor.

"We had a little bit of a dip there, and obviously they got one to tie it up. But overall I thought we played pretty quick." 

Dylan DeMelo, Kyle Connor — who led the Jets with nine shots — and Mario Ferraro scored for Winnipeg, while Adam Lowry chipped in with a pair of assists. Stuart Skinner stopped 26 shots in his Jets debut.

"I think we were ready. You saw us in the first ten minutes. I think the shots were like eight to one. We were ready to rock and roll. That's just kind of how the game works. There's ebbs and flows of the game," said Skinner.

"You know, Boston's definitely going to have their push. We knew that was going to happen. But all in all, I thought we did a really good job and just got to tighten up a few things.”

The Jets had some good looks on their first power play of the night, and they finally got one past Jeremy Swayman a few minutes later.

Dylan DeMelo stepped into a slapshot that found its way through at 4:52, giving the Jets the early lead. DeMelo became the first Jets defenceman to score the team's first goal of the season since Dustin Byfuglien did it back in

Then Tyrell Bauer introduced himself to the NHL.

On just his second shift, the Cochrane product dropped the gloves with Bruins forward Mark Kastelic, making it pretty clear he wasn’t going to be a spectator in his NHL debut. Bauer played six minutes tonight but made an impression on his teammates.

"He's just an awesome player. Having that type of guy on your team, if anybody takes liberties on anybody, any type of player, he's the first guy jumping in," said Connor.

"And I thought he looked good, too, made a couple of great breakout passes. And that stuff definitely goes noticed by the team and we appreciate it, it goes a long way."

Boston answered later in the period. Hampus Lindholm fired a quick shot toward Stuart Skinner at 9:23, and it appeared to catch the Jets goaltender just as he was trying to get his glove on it.

The Bruins took the lead for the first time at 15:20, James Hagens worked himself free from Mario Ferraro in front of the Jets net and fired a loose puck past Skinner for a 2-1 lead after one.

The second period belonged to Kyle Connor — and once again, he made NHL history. Connor pounced on a Gabe Vilardi rebound on the power play, snapping it home to pull the Jets even at 2-2.

And just like that, Connor extended his NHL-record streak to nine straight season openers with a goal. Six was the previous record. Connor has now made it nine — and somehow, he just keeps finding the back of the net when the season begins.

Winnipeg retook the lead with less than 15 seconds left in the second period. Adam Lowry did some nice work down low before sending the puck back to Mario Ferraro, whose shot deflected off a Bruins player and into the Boston net for Ferraro’s first goal as a Jet — another one of the new faces making an immediate impact.

The Bruins tied it late in the third with Swayman on the bench in favour of the extra attacker, Elias Lindholm perfectly redirected a pass from David Pastrnak at 18:22.

In overtime, Lowry had a great scoring chance that went wide and the Bruins came back the other way and Peterka finished things off with his second of the season.

Even with all the positives tonight, head coach Scott Arniel talked about the sting of losing.

"Because we played such a real big game, against a real good team. But at the end of the day, that was our first game. Lots of lots of good things happened," said Arniel.

"There was also, you could tell guys were, ‘Oh yeah, right, that's what I have to do. And it’s kind of that still getting out of that summer stuff. Once we can do it for 60 minutes, where it's just like clockwork, then obviously you can move on either other side of that."

2026 first round pick Viggo Björck also made his NHL debut playing just over 15 and a half minutes, registering two shots on goal but was used in a lot of key situations like the power play and penalty kill.

"Viggo looked looked real calm and looked like he's been in the league for a little bit," said Arniel.

"There were a couple times where they took some runs at him, and he did a good job of sort of seeing it coming and got out of the way."