BOSTON — Boston Bruins Coach Claude Julien didn’t think it was one of his team’s better efforts. He certainly was glad, though, that Boston found a way to earn the extra point.
Ryan Spooner and Torey Krug scored in the shootout to lift the Bruins to a 3-2 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday night.
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“I think the two points is really important this time of year when you look at the standings. It’s not so much the goals we gave up, it’s the way we played again,” Julien said. “We need to be better. I thought our intensity was good, but not good enough.
“When you’re a little bit more intense, so is the execution. The execution was average tonight. We’re going through a little bit of that stretch right now.”
Brad Marchand got a goal for the fourth straight game for Boston, which has won four of five. David Pastrnak also scored for the Bruins.
Coming into the game, Boston had strangely played much better on the road than at home. The Bruins showed glimpses of that trouble again, blowing a two-goal lead.
Julien recently called his team’s troubles at home versus its success on the road “not comparable and not acceptable.” The Bruins are 14-5-3 away from TD Garden, but 11-12-2 at home.
Kerby Rychel and Dalton Prout scored for the Blue Jackets. Prout’s was his first goal in 108 games, but Columbus lost its third in a row.
Bruins backup goalie Jonas Gustavsson made 31 saves after learning when he got to the rink that he was starting.
“Tuukka (Rask) was scheduled to play,” Julien said. “He wasn’t 100 percent.”
Joonas Korpisalo stopped 32 shots for the Blue Jackets.
Spooner, shooting first in the tiebreaker, beat Korpisalo with a wrister to the glove side. Krug, going third for Boston, fired a rising shot inside the right post.
“I tried to go glove and kind of fanned on it a bit,” Spooner said. “It still went in, which was good.”
Both teams killed off power plays in OT.
Boston went down a man for two minutes when defenseman Dennis Seidenberg was whistled for slashing after breaking Joonas Kemppainen’s stick with 5.2 seconds left in regulation.
“We had some chances. We had some pucks in front of the net. We just couldn’t get a handle on it at times,” said Blue Jackets assistant coach Craig Hartsburg, filling in for ailing head coach John Tortorella. “I thought our guys did a good job, and then we killed one off in overtime as well. They competed hard all night.”
The Blue Jackets were called for too many men on the ice in OT, but Korpisalo made a handful of stops.
The building was about three-quarters full despite a late afternoon snowstorm that snarled traffic.
Boston squandered a two-goal lead in less than seven minutes in the second period.
The Bruins jumped ahead 1-0 just 32 seconds into the second when Marchand redirected Spooner’s pass for his team-leading 19th goal. Pastrnak made it 2-0 just more than three minutes later.
The Blue Jackets then scored twice in a little more than then minutes, tying it when Rychel tipped a shot past Gustavsson at 10:08.
Prout had sliced it to 2-1 when his tough-angle shot slipped under Gustavsson’s left pad.
“When you’re growing up and score goals as a kid, that’s what everybody wants to do,” Prout said. “So there’s a little kid in you that always wants to score, and of course it felt good, and more importantly it got us back in the game there.”
The Blue Jackets nearly grabbed the lead with two minutes to play in regulation, but Gustavsson stopped a pair of shots during a scramble in front of the net.
CANADIENS 3, MAPLE LEAFS 2: Max Pacioretty and Lars Eller scored in the shootout, and visiting Montreal ended a five-game losing streak.
PENGUINS 5, CANUCKS 4: Evgeni Malkin scored three times to help Pittsburgh rally for a win at home.
It was Malkin’s 10th career hat trick and first since Feb. 25, 2012. Malkin, who leads the team with 23 goals and 47 points, has 19 points in his last 15 games.
Sidney Crosby got a point in a season-best sixth straight game, scoring an empty-net goal. Pittsburgh overcame a 2-0 deficit for the second time in as many games.
Vancouver’s Jannik Hansen also had a hat trick, the second of his career.
DEVILS 3, JETS 1: Lee Stempniak scored twice and Corey Schneider made 22 saves, leading New Jersey to a win at Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Stempniak recorded his 13th goal of the season in the first period, then added another on a redirected shot in the third.
DUCKS 4, RED WINGS 3: Corey Perry and Ryan Kesler each scored twice and Anaheim extended Detroit’s home losing streak to five games.
PANTHERS 5, LIGHTNING 2: Jonathan Huberdeau had a goal and an assist as Florida ended visiting Tampa Bay’s seven-game winning streak.
SHARKS 4, WILD 3: Joe Pavelski scored the tiebreaking goal with 1:28 to go, and San Jose beat visiting Minnesota for its seventh win in eight games.
NOTES
DEVILS: Forward Jiri Tlusty had surgery to repair a torn ligament in his right wrist and is expected to be out three to four months.
Tlusty has played in 30 games this season, with two goals and two assists.
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