Gustavsson, Bruins defeat Blue Jackets in shootout

BOSTON -- Starting on short notice, goaltender Jonas Gustavsson made 31 saves through overtime, and Ryan Spooner and Torey Krug scored in the shootout to help the Boston Bruins defeat the Columbus Blue Jackets 3-2 at TD Garden on Saturday.
Gustavsson made two saves in the shootout for the Bruins (25-17-5), who have won four of their past five games.

Boston coach Claude Julien said he decided in the afternoon to start Gustavsson instead of No. 1 goalie Tuukka Rask, who was "less than 100 percent."
"He got the news at the last minute that he was playing," Julien said. "Tuukka was scheduled to play, and we made a change there this afternoon for certain reasons. Nothing major; obviously, [Rask] was the backup. So he had to go in there, and for a guy that found out just as he got to the rink this afternoon, he did well and he was well-prepared."
Gustavsson has won three starts in a row and is 9-3-1 with a 2.29 goals-against average and .917 save percentage in his first season with the Bruins after earning the backup job during training camp on a professional tryout.
"Obviously, you got to try to be ready no matter what the situation is ... anything can happen in a game and so on," Gustavsson said. "So, obviously prepared maybe a little bit different, but in general it's pretty much the same. So when I got here, like I said, it was just about doing the same routines and all that and play the game."
Bruins forwards Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak scored in second period. Spooner, who assisted on Marchand's goal, scored in the first round of the shootout, and Krug clinched the victory with a goal in the third round after Gustavsson had denied the Blue Jackets' Cam Atkinson and Brandon Dubinsky.
Goaltender Joonas Korpisalo made 32 saves, and Dalton Prout and Kerby Rychel each scored a goal for Columbus (17-27-5), which has lost three in a row (0-2-1).
The Blue Jackets played without coach John Tortorella, who did not make the trip after he broke two ribs in an on-ice collision at practice in Columbus on Friday.
"Boston's a real good team. I thought we competed hard and worked hard for 60 minutes, and we had no passengers tonight," said Columbus associate coach Craig Hartsburg, who filled in for Tortorella. "We got down, and that was a huge goal by [Prout] to get us back in it. But we battled all night long."
The Bruins scored twice in the opening 3:34 of the second period to take a 2-0 lead. Marchand scored off a feed from Spooner 32 seconds into the period for a 1-0 lead. Then David Pastrnak cashed in on his own drive to the net after a rebound of a David Krejci shot to double Boston's lead at 3:34.
The Blue Jackets stormed back starting with Prout's goal at 6:58. After a faceoff win, the puck was moved around to Prout, who skated to the goal line and beat Gustavsson to the short side with a sharp-angled wrist shot to cut the lead to 2-1. It was Prout's first goal in 108 games dating to March 15, 2014.
"It always feels good," Prout said. "When you're growing up and score goals as a kid, that's what everybody wants to do. 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."
Rychel's goal at 10:08 tied it 2-2. After the Blue Jackets pressured the Bruins for about a minute, Rychel redirected Justin Falk's wrist shot from the top of the left circle past Gustavsson.
Despite the Bruins' recent success, Julien sees plenty of room for improvement.
"We need to be better," Julien said. "I thought our intensity was good, but not good enough. And we need to be better with that. When I say 'intensity,' when you're a little bit more tense, so is your execution. And again our execution was average tonight. ... So we need to up both our intensity, and that should take care of a lot of different things in our game that's not where it should be right now."
The Bruins visit the Philadelphia Flyers on Monday, when the Blue Jackets host the Montreal Canadiens to open a home-and-home.