BOSTON — Coach Rick Bowness watched a couple of NHL games on TV on Wednesday after the Columbus Blue Jackets arrived in advance of Thursday’s game against the Boston Bruins. It made him a bit nervous.
“The first periods were sloppy,” Bowness said. “They were terrible.”
The Blue Jackets did not struggle out of the gate, but they could use a little work with the finishing touches. The Bruins scored three unanswered goals and hung on for a 4-2 win before 17,850 in TD Garden.
They were done in by familiar faces, too.
Bruins goaltender Joonas Korpisalo, who spent the first eight seasons of his NHL career in Columbus, had 36 saves, despite leaving the game for over six minutes in the second period after a collision with Blue Jackets forward Miles Wood.
Sean Kuraly, who returned to the Bruins as a free agent after spending four seasons with his hometown Blue Jackets, scored a clutch insurance goal — his first game-winning goal of the season — to give Boston a 3-1 lead midway through the third.
The loss, coupled with the New York Islanders’ come-from-behind win in Montreal, dropped the Blue Jackets six points behind the Bruins for the second wild-card in the East and six points behind the Islanders for third place in the Metropolitan Division. It also snapped the Blue Jackets’ season-best seven-game winning streak.
But the Jackets weren’t bothered by the way they played. They outshot Boston 40-23.
“The first period is one of the best periods the whole time I’ve been here,” Bowness said. “Twenty shots. We had 12 scoring chances. To walk out of there with one goal is … give their goalie credit.
“We had more than enough chances to win that hockey game. That game didn’t get away from us. We played hard, we played well. If we play like that, we’ll live with the results.”
Kirill Marchenko and Adam Fantilli scored for the Blue Jackets, while Mason Marchment had two assists. Goaltender Elvis Merzlikins — fresh from playing for Latvia at the Olympics — stopped 19 of 22 shots.
The more celebrated return for the Blue Jackets was Zach Werenski, who rejoined the club on Wednesday, just three days — and a whole lot of celebrating — after winning a gold medal for the United States.
The Bruins took time during the first TV timeout of the first period to honor all of their Olympians, and included Werenski. They all received a standing ovation from the crowd, many of whom were decked out in USA sweaters.
The Blue Jackets did not ease Werenski back into action, either. He played 28:34, including 10:27 in the first period. He also had seven shots on goal and 15 shot attempts, both game-highs.
“I felt pretty good, actually,” Werenski said. “I felt like I was playing my game, creating some chances. A little tired during the intermissions, but I feel like when I got on the ice, I felt fine.”
The Blue Jackets took a 1-0 lead only 4:32 into the game when Marchment swatted at a puck from deep in his own end, with Marchenko skating free in the neutral zone as his hopeful target. Sure enough, he found him. Marchenko scored on the breakaway for his 20th of the season, snapping off a wrister from between the circles.
The lead was gone later in the first period after Boston’s Viktor Arvidsson scored at 15:51 — although it’s more accurate to say Arvidsson was credited with the goal. The puck actually deflected off the stick of Jackets center Isac Lundeström before sailing past Merzlikins.
It was that kind of night for the Blue Jackets. That’s how the Jackets’ team shutout streak of 162 minutes, 16 seconds — the sixth-longest in franchise history — and Merzlikins’ personal streak of 105:02 came to an end.
Elvis Merzlikins is fresh off playing for Latvia in the Olympics. (Eric Canha / Imagn Images)
The Bruins took the lead for good in the second period on a Morgan Geekie goal. Kuraly made it 3-1 in the third, scoring off a two-on-one after Jackets defenseman Damon Severson was tripped up on the play.
The Jackets had chances. Fantilli made it 3-2 at 13:45 of the third, beating Korpisalo with a wrister from the high slot. But Korpisalo wasn’t giving up much.
Asked if he’d ever seen his former teammate play better, Werenski joked: “Maybe that five-overtime game,” he said, referring to Korpisalo’s record-setting 85-save performance against the Tampa Bay Lightning in the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs.
“We’re aware how good a goalie he is,” Werenski said. “We did everything we could except score: traffic, rebounds, two-on-ones. I mean, not much else we can do. He played a great game, and it’s unfortunate it was against us.”
Werenski had a chance to tie the game at three barely a minute after Fantilli made it 3-2, but Korpisalo went left to right and made a strong blocker save to deny it.
“If you play that way, you’re going to win a lot of games,” Werenski said. “I feel like everything’s kind of gone right for us the last 12 games, even when we weren’t necessarily maybe playing our best, we were winning games. Today, it was one of our better games and it just didn’t work out. That’s hockey. You’re going to take the positives out of it. We were the better team and probably should have gotten the result, but we didn’t.”