Preseason Bruins vs. Columbus RECAP: Baby Bruins Lose in the shootout, but plenty to talk about

Well, it happened.

Why worry? It's preseason. There were a grand total of like five starters on the roster. If anything, this was the first of a couple of teams that will be going as part of camp to really put these prospects through their paces. More of a showcase for the viewer than anything else.

First Period:

The game started slow. Very slow. Both sides were using tonight's contest as more of a board battle drill during the first 20 minutes as a relative amount of nothing happened. Columbus got a three shot lead but otherwise nothing of important was gained or lost as both sides just tested their mettle in board play.

On the bright side, Anton Khudobin looked pretty solid for the few shots he had thrown on him.

Second Period:

This is where it gets interesting.

Two minutes into the period did Sonny Milano gain the first tally for Columbus, who had come out quite strong in this particular power play shift. He managed to take a weird angle shot that just so happened to get past Anton Khudobin ...somehow.

There is no replay in Preseason, so if the refs say that it was a goal, then it was a goal. I guess.

It wasn't all bad, as Columbus repeatedly shot themselves in the foot by taking penalty after dumb penalty, placing the Bruins in position to thunder Curtis McElhinney with shot after shot. One such sequence was of a certain 2015 draft pick Jake DeBrusk feeding Jimmy Hayes a beauty of a pass to even the scoring at 1 apiece.

That was beautiful. Simply beautiful. DeBrusk and Hayes made the Columbus defense look positively foolish.

From then on, the Bruins effectively spent most of their time messing around with Columbus, trying to pull ahead and definitely getting every chance possible as CBJ (the bruins too, but most CBJ) took bad penalty after bad penalty and made some quality chances.

...all except for this particular chance. That kinda stunk.

Daniel Zaar had approximately nobody on him for this chance. They could do what they pleased to get ahead. CBJ was up 2-1. Not a great shift for everyone involved.

The period ended as Columbus took yet another penalty and had the Bruins with about less than a minute of power play time.

Third Period:

As per the gameplan, Anton Khudobin's night ended and Zane McIntyre was given the final 20 minutes to tend goal. He did pretty well. Though in his "detriment", he didn't have to do much.

The Bruins effectively took over this period. CBJ spent most of it on the defense and it showed. A minute in? and the tying goal came from the stick of Brandon Carlo to the tip of the stick of Danton Heinen with the kind of goal that slow motion cameras were made for.

And of course NESN is using the goddamn level 9 camera to show us this goal that requires a ton of skill and timing that needs to be shown as close as reason demands and uses the actual shot they should've been using second. NESN, please do better, alright?

If nothing else could you just throw that camera that's up on level 9 out onto the ice? Because it sucks. a lot.

At that point, CBJ was just happy to try and get to Overtime at this point, and to Overtime they went, where they did...

Overtime:

Yeah. If this was supposed to end games quicker, I'd settle for ties right about now. What was neat was McIntyre being lights out as the Bruins kinda scrambled 3-on-3. But alas, nothing was solved, and we moved on to the SKILLZ COMPETITION.

Shootout:

...Where Sam Gagner (who was somehow not given a big bag of money by someone) proved his worth after three rounds by handling the puck right past McIntyre. 3-2 result and the Bruins lose Preseason game one.

Oh well. There's more camp to worry about. And more regulars will be bringing themselves to the Detroit Red Wings game on Wednesday.

Notes:

- This was kind of a low event game, eh? I was surprised by that.

- Cehlarik had an obscene CF%. Like "Best on the team and on the other team"s obscene. There's more to this kid than we've been led to believe...

- Zboril wasn't perfect, but managed to pull it together over the last two periods to have an otherwise strong performance. Rob O'Gara and Brandon Carlo had strong shifts all over the ice as well, playing to each other's strengths

- Danton Heinen's tip tho...good golly.

- Neither goaltender looked great in numbers but given that both were splitting duty I think we can give them some slack.

- The next game is at 7pm against the Red Wings. We'll try and get you details about the broadcast if there are any.