BOSTON— Brad Marchand scored in the sixth round of the shootout to give the Boston Bruins a 4-3 victory over the New York Rangers in exhibition play Thursday night.

Ryan Spooner and Frank Vatrano also had shootout goals. Spooner and Brandon Carlo scored in the third period to help Boston overcome a 3-1 deficit. Tyler Randell also scored for Boston, which lost defenseman Zdeno Chara to an upper-body injury in the first period.

Jeremy Smith made 22 saves for the Bruins.

Brady Skjei, Mats Zuccarello and Kevin Hayes scored for New York. Zuccarello and Dan Boyle scored in the shootout.

Henrik Lundqvist made 21 saves in two periods, and Jeff Malcolm stopped 15 shots in the third period and overtime.

New York’s Lundqvist, Zuccarello, Derick Brassard, Rick Nash and Ryan McDonagh made their preseason debuts. For Zuccarello, it was his first game action since Game 5 of the Metropolitan Division semifinal series against the Pittsburgh Penguins. His skull was fractured when he was struck by McDonagh’s shot in the first period of New York’s 2-1 series-ending victory.

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Zuccarello played with a new helmet for extra protection, battled in the corners and backchecked.

Before the game, New York assigned Richard Nejezchleb and Travis Oleksuk to Hartford of the AHL.

BLACKHAWKS: One day after charging that evidence in the Patrick Kane investigation had been tampered with, the attorney for the woman who accused the Blackhawks star of sexual assault abruptly quit the case and said he now had doubts about the explosive allegation.

Attorney Thomas Eoannou made the announcement at a hastily called news conference, where he acknowledged he “no longer had confidence” in the claim that had drawn international headlines and threw a measure of chaos into the high-profile case.

“Because I no longer have confidence in the story given to me, I’m withdrawing from the case,” he said. “It’s my ethical obligation to withdraw.”

Eoannou – a prominent Buffalo attorney – alleged on Wednesday a ripped, empty evidence bag that once contained the woman’s rape kit had been left anonymously on her mother’s doorstep a day earlier. He said the accuser’s mother told him she found it wedged between the screen door and front door when she arrived home around 1:30 p.m.

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The woman’s mother provided him with that version of events, he said. Eoannou said he began to have doubts about the story around noon on Thursday.

“There’s no question the bag is an evidence bag,” he said. “(But) I do not believe the version of events I was given when I received it.”

The initial accusation prompted an investigation by Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita III, who had scheduled a news conference for Friday morning to address the allegation. Sedita has never publicly acknowledged the investigation into a 21-year-old western New York woman’s allegation that Kane raped her at his lakefront mansion early on Aug. 2.

Kane attorney Paul Cambria announced that a DNA analysis in the case found that samples taken below the accuser’s waist contain “a mixture” of male profiles. None of the DNA, he said, belonged to Kane.

Cambria downplayed the drama surrounding the case during an interview before Eoannou’s news conference.

“We’re comfortable with whatever we’re dealing with,” Cambria said.

The Hamburg Police Department, which conducted the initial investigation, called its handling of the evidence “unassailable” and said it would cooperate.

The Erie County crime lab said in a statement Wednesday that all evidence in the Kane investigation was accounted for and still in its original evidence package, which suggests that the bag purportedly left on the doorstep may not be connected to the case.


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