BOSTON – The Bruins continued their preseason display of youth and speed by opening their home exhibition season with a win over the Red Wings at TD Garden.
After a scoreless first period, the Bruins exploded for three goals in the middle 20 minutes with scores from Ryan Fitzgerald, Danton Heinen and Austin Czarnik that paced them to a 4-2 victory over Detroit, and gives them a 2-0-0 record thus far in the preseason.
The Bruins and Red Wings battled to a scoreless tie after the first 20 minutes of play, but things loosened up after that in a game that Boston controlled for long stretches with puck possession and transition offense. The first goal was actually a great individual rush by Jakub Zboril, who dropped a pass to a wide-open Fitzgerald for the finish past Petr Mrazek. Little more than four minutes later Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson drove the net, drew the defense toward him and then fed to a wide open Heinen crashing on the backdoor.
Czarnik put the punctuation mark on a strong game by earning himself a penalty shot after getting behind the Red Wings defense, and scored the game-winning goal in the second period. Detroit scored a couple of goals afterward to make it a competitive third period, but they didn’t have enough to overtake Anton Khudobin playing the full game for the B’s. Teddy Purcell added an insurance marker late in the third period after finishing off a 3-on-1 feed from Czarnik.
Khudobin finished with 14 saves in a win that was dominated by the home team in front of the home crowd. The only downer in the preseason win was both Torey Krug (puck to the face) and Forsbacka Karlsson (big hit in corner) getting dinged up as things went along.