Bruins take Blue Jackets to a seven-round shootout, win 4-3
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| Photo by Jared Wickerham/Getty Images |
The Bruins’ first chance came early in the first, as a shot from Patrice Bergeron slowly trickled through Sergei Bobrovsky’s five-hole but was swatted away by Dalton Prout before the puck crossed the line. Ryan Johansen struck first for the Jackets, blocking a shot from Kevan Miller at his defensive end and pushing the puck forward, beating Niklas Svedberg with a wrister. The Jackets scored their second goal in 1:38 to go up 2-0, after a drive from the blue line bounced off Nick Foligno to beat Svedberg. Bobrovsky came up big with less than five minutes left in the first, denying Eriksson from the top of the crease, after he was fed the puck from behind the net by Carl Soderberg.
The start of the second was largely uneventful, with the Bruins getting a few opportunities but not capitalizing on them. With 9:20 left in the second, Matt Bartkowski was called for a questionable interference penalty, sending the Jackets to the first power play of the game, but the Bruins made the kill. Thanks to Reilly Smith, a holding penalty was called against Ryan Johansen with a little under a minute and a half left in the second. The second ended with the Jackets still ahead 2-0.
The B’s started the third with 36 seconds of power play time. A minute and a half into the third, Dennis Seidenberg cut the Jackets’ lead in half, scoring on a slapshot from close to mid-ice. A scramble in the Bruins’ defensive end saw Svedberg making three clutch stops, keeping it a one-goal game. Bartkowski took his second trip to the box of the night, called for slashing, but the B’s were able to make the kill. A massive drive from Bartkowski was tipped in by Matt Fraser, tying the game for the Bruins. Bartkowski’s newfound confidence seemed to be showing, as that point was his second assist of the night, and his third point in two games. Paille capitalized on a bad turnover with under nine minutes left in the third, getting his first goal in 37 games to put the Bruins ahead. Johansen to Jack Johnson kept the game alive for the Jackets, tying it up 3-3. The game was still tied at the end of the third, forcing the game into overtime.
Neither team scored during OT, but with 10 seconds left Milan Lucic and Prout got into a scuffle. Lucic was one-punched and got up bleeding from the mouth, and the teams headed to the shootout.
The shootout went to the seventh round, but emergency call up Alexander Khokhlachev sent the B’s home with a win.
