Osgood's shutout helps Red Wings beat Bruins 2-0

By LARRY LAGE
AP Sports Writer

DETROIT — Chris Osgood reached one milestone and approached
another one as he helped the Detroit Red Wings blank the Boston
Bruins 2-0 Tuesday night.

Osgood made 29 saves for his 50th shutout and 394th career
victory.

“I don’t put much merit in shutouts,” he said. “The only thing
they’re good for is that you know you have a great chance of
winning the game. I grew up watching Grant Fuhr play and he was
just about winning games, so that’s kind of my mentality.”

Osgood, though, acknowledged he’s trying not to think about win
No. 400 because it “is big for me.”

Henrik Zetterberg and Tomas Holmstrom scored in the first period
to generate more than enough offense against a team that is
struggling to score and didn’t get any puck luck, hitting the
post in both the first and second periods.

The Bruins have not scored in nearly 133 minutes, getting shut
out in consecutive games for the first time since March of 2007.

“We’re going to have to decide that we’re tired of hearing we
had a good effort without winning,” Boston coach Claude Julien
said.

The Bruins pulled Tim Thomas with about 1 1/2 minutes left to
add an extra skater and called a timeout in the final minute,
trying to come up with a way to pull within a goal.

It didn’t happen.

Thomas had 24 saves for Boston, which fell under .500 with their
third loss in four games.

“I made a couple of mistakes that ended up costing us,” Thomas
said. “We couldn’t put the puck in the net.”

The rebuilding Red Wings are 3-0-1 in their last four games and
have a point in seven of their last eight.

“I imagine they looked at us like we looked at them,” Detroit
coach Mike Babcock said. “Without (Marc) Savard and (Milan)
Lucic, they have big-time players out of the lineup – no
different than us.”

Lucic is out with a broken finger and Savard has a broken foot.

Detroit is missing players who combined for 88 goals last
season, then lost more scoring options when Johan Franzen and
Valtteri Filppula were injured.

The Red Wings have relied on Holmstrom all season, and lately
they’ve been able to lean on Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk.

Holmstrom has 10 points this season. Zetterberg has bounced back
from a slow start with nine points in his last nine games.
Datsyuk has had at least two points in four of his last five
games.

Zetterberg’s third goal of the season came 2 seconds into a
power play after Datsyuk pushed the puck toward the net from the
left circle off a faceoff.

Holmstrom’s eighth goal in 13 games came trailing on a rush
after Datsyuk made a nifty drop pass off an up-ice feed from
Todd Bertuzzi.

“He’s got eyes in his back,” Holmstrom said.

NOTES: Michael Ryder and Marco Sturm both had a good chance to
score, but got unfortunate caroms off a post behind Osgood. …
Detroit’s Jonathan Ericsson (flu), Brian Rafalski (flu) and Brad
May (eye) were scratched from the lineup. … The Bruins were
the only team Holmstrom had not scored against in his career.
… The Original Six teams are not scheduled to play again this
season.

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