By NICOLE KRAFT
Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Artemi Panarin gave himself a nice 26th birthday present.
Panarin and Oliver Bjorkstrand scored in a shootout, and the Columbus Blue Jackets beat the Boston Bruins 4-3 on Monday night after squandering a two-goal lead in the third period.
Columbus has won eight of its first 12 games, a franchise record for October.
Blue Jackets goalie Sergei Bobrovsky made 27 saves for his sixth win. He also had an assist — the eighth of his career and first this season.
Tuukka Rask stopped 29 shots for the Bruins, who lost their second in a row and dropped to 4-4-2.
The Blue Jackets had been plagued by slow starts but got on the board 1:59 into the game when David Savard threw the puck toward the net and it wiggled past Rask off a deflection. Alexander Wennberg and Matt Calvert assisted on Savard’s second goal of the season.
“With the starts we’ve had lately, it’s always nice to go up in a game early like that,” Savard said.
After a pair of unsuccessful power plays, Columbus found the back of the net again with less than three minutes left in the first period. Boone Jenner, playing in his fifth game after returning from injury, scratched and clawed at Markus Nutivaara’s rebound until he put it past Rask at 17:08. Josh Anderson was also credited with an assist on Jenner’s first goal of the season.
The Blue Jackets’ third goal of the night came at 8:27 of the second period when Nutivaara took a handoff from Bobrovsky and sent it nearly the length of the ice to a driving Tyler Motte, who put the puck in the net.
“It was a great pass,” Motte said. “I’d like to see how far that traveled before it got to my stick. It found a way, and it was right there.”
The goal was Motte’s first with the Blue Jackets and came just hours after he was recalled from the minors to take the place of injured Cam Atkinson.
“From his first shift on I thought he gave us energy and did a lot of good things,” coach John Tortorella said. “I had to move him into a spot where he was getting more ice time.”
Patrice Bergeron got the Bruins on the board with his second goal of the season, a power-play score at 15:37 of the second with a shot from the point off around-the-horn passes from Danton Heinen and David Pastrnak.
It was the first power-play goal given up by Columbus at home this season, and the first the Bruins scored against the Blue Jackets with a man advantage since Nov. 30, 2013.
With both teams skating 4-on-4 in the third period thanks to penalties on Calvert and Brad Marchand, Torey Krug caught Bobrovsky moving side to side and made it 3-2 at 10:26. Assists went to Kevan Miller and Pastrnak.
Marchand came out of the box and tied the game 40 seconds later, scoring the Bruins’ second power-play goal of the night with assists by Bergeron and Pastrnak. It was Marchand’s eighth goal of the season and the 200th of his career.
“We put ourselves in a bad spot and we fought our way out of it, so that’s the positive,” Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy said. “I don’t like to see us start like that. I take a lot of pride in being ready to go. I thought we weren’t as a group. We corrected it and gave ourselves a chance to get two points. It just didn’t work out in the shootout.”
Although Columbus dominated much of the game, its power play continued to flounder as the team failed to score all four times it had a man advantage.
NOTES: The game was a homecoming for Sean Kuraly, a Dublin, Ohio, native, whose younger brother, Nick, is senior captain of the Bishop Watterson High School hockey team in Columbus. ... Boston backup goalie Anton Khudobin was hurt during Sunday’s optional practice and did not travel to Columbus.
UP NEXT
Bruins: Host the Las Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday.
Blue Jackets: At the Florida Panthers on Thursday.
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