The Bruins looked like the were still hungover from Wednesday night's Garden party as they looked sluggish right out of the gate against the Detroit Red Wings, who breezed to a 6-1 win over the B's on Friday night at TD Garden.
The Red Wings staked themselves with a 1-0 lead just 1:10 into the game when Todd Bertuzzi's slapper from the right circle whistled past Tuukka Rask for his 9th goal of the '10-'11 campaign.
Daniel Cleary's 17th goal of the season extended Detroit's lead to 2-0 on the the Wings' second shot of the game at 3:10 of the first period. Niklas Kronwall dumped the puck down low below the goal line and Jiri Hudler tracked it down before find Clearly charging hard to the net in the slot.
David Krejci pulled the Bruins to within one with a power play goal with 2:07 remaining in the opening period. Milan Lucic gathered the puck off of a misfire by Zdeno Chara from the point. Lucic had his back to goal in front of Detroit goalie Jimmy Howard and alertly saw Krejci open in the slot. Lucic slid the puck to Krecji and #46 buried it for his 8th goal of the season.
Jiri Hudler regained the two-goal edge for the Red Wings 1:09 into the second period. Henrik Zetterberg threaded a perfect diagonal pass through the attacking zone to Hudler at the right post. Hudler was able to hammer the pass home from point blank range to complete the bang-bang one-timer. Hudler notched his 6th goal, while Zetterberg posted his 43rd assist of the season and Brian Rafalski picked up 31st helper.
Henrik Zetterberg made it 4-1 on a backhander on the power play with 3:46 left in the middle period. Tomas Holmstrom had the puck in the right wing corner and sent a pass to Zetterberg in the trapezoid. Zetterberg reached out from behind the goal line and shoveled a backhander past Tuukka Rask.
The Wings struck again just 24 seconds later on a fluky goal from Todd Bertuzzi. Bertuzzi gained possesion of the puck below the goal line after Tuukka Rask misplayed the puck. The opportunistic Bertuzzi banked the puck off the pads of a scrambling Rask and in from behind the goal line for his second tally of the night.
After giving 5 goals on 20 shots, Claude Julien opted to pull starter Tuukka Rask in favor of Tim Thomas to start the third period.
With Brad Marchand (roughing) and Zdeno Chara (hooking) in the box and the Bruins trying to kill a 5-on-3 Detroit power play, Tomas Holmstrom extended the Red Wing's lead to 6-1 with his 12th tally of the season.
Notes:
- The Bruins will a chance to redeem themselves against this very same Detroit Red Wings team on Sunday afternoon on national television.
- Former Maine Blackbear goaltender Jimmy Howard made 25 saves in the win for Detroit.
- 6 of the Bruins 7 penalties tonight were stick infractions, which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about tonight's game: the Bruins weren't skating hard.
- Detroit did a great job of getting pucks deep in the attacking zone and cycling the puck (both on the power play and at even strength). If you look at almost everyone one of the Red Wings' goal's tonight, the play originated from below the goal line.
- The Red Wings were 2-6 on the power play. The Bruins were 1-3 with extra skaters.
- Patrice Bergeron won 17 of 21 face-offs (81%).
- Tim Thomas stopped 14 of the 15 shots he faced in mop-up duty.
- Boxing legend and Lowell, MA native Mickey Ward dropped the ceremonial first puck sporting a custom Bruins jersey with the #38 on the sleeves to represent his 38 career victories and "Mickey Ward" on the back written out in boxing robe style script.
- For more on tonight's game, head over to Winging It In Motown.
Quotes:
"I’m not going to start analyzing that. I thought I deserved to get pulled. I didn’t play to my level today."
Tuukka Rask on getting pulled after the second period
"Definitely a different team than what we usually face. They’re really experienced and they like to hold on to the puck. They’re not so much about speed. They’re about making those plays. They’re a really good team. Obviously we knew that, but we just couldn’t match it today."
Tuukka Rask on Detroit's style of play
"Yeah, I stopped it backhand and then I missed the puck pretty much. And then I didn’t want him to get the goal from behind the net but then he just shot it at my skate … off my skate, off my head and in and that’s it."
Tuukka Rask on misplaying the puck with lead to Todd Bertuzzi's 2nd goal
"I think that we just need to play our game, which we didn’t tonight. We were watching. We know they are a puck possession team, still doesn’t matter usually you put pressure on them and they can’t play the game they want to play. We were watching for too long. Especially in the first fifteen minutes of that first period it was all them. The last five minutes of one it wasn’t that bad. In the second period the same thing happened again. Especially against a team like Detroit ...we said before the game that it was a good measuring stick for us. You couldn’t even tell … it wasn’t our team playing tonight."
Patrice Bergeron
"I think we need to play our game. We need to move our feet, be hard on the forecheck. It’s been our game. It’s been the way that we’ve been creating chances and getting a lot of goals. We didn’t do that. Obviously, that’s what they want to do. They want to bring us back and spread us out and create some chances with that. I think we were sitting back a little too much."
Patrice Bergeron
"I thought we were playing real well at the blue lines. We didn’t give them a whole lot, many chances for two-on-ones, three-on-twos. I thought we played real well defensively and we didn’t spend a whole lot of time in our own zone. I thought we were aggressive to push them on the outside and once we got the puck, we were going quick the other way."
Detroit defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom on how they were able to shutdown the Bruins
"Well, we didn’t feel he was as sharp as we needed him to be, that was number one. He still made some good saves. I don’t think we didn’t recognize that as well, but he just wasn’t as sharp tonight and after discussing the situation, we just felt that the right thing to do was to give Timmy [Thomas] the third period."
Claude Julien on pulling Tuukka Rask
"We were flat. We weren’t skating tonight. We were second on the puck, and even when they had the puck, I just felt that they had lots of times to make plays. We were very slow reacting tonight. So I don’t know if the emotional games that we’ve played lately caught up to us, but we just came out flat and you know, it just seemed that nothing was going to go our way, even when we had some scoring chances. We hit the posts as well and had a couple of good scoring chances that could have gotten us back in the game but it just wasn’t going in for us. You know, definitely to me, we were flat tonight and we weren’t on top of our game. So you can’t look at this and say, "Well, let’s compare the two teams." Obviously they were the better team tonight, but we’re a much better team than what we showed. This is the opportunity that we have, we get another shot at these guys. I think it’s important that we go in there and play our game—play a lot better. At least that way, you see where you stand with teams like Detroit."
Claude Julien
"Well, the game’s just been over and I don’t think I’ve made that decision yet. I think we have to look at situations, but we keep saying that over and over, we need Tuukka to come in and give Timmy [Thomas] some rest and we need Tuukka to play well because we know he can play well. Tonight was a tough night for him. The last time he played, he was very good for us, so he’s capable of it. I think we’ll just chalk that up as a tough night like the rest of the team in front of him and move on."
Claude Julien on whether or not he will give Tuukka Rask the start in goal on Sunday
"You don’t like to sit around too much. Sunday at twelve-thirty we have to be ready and be a lot different team. Show them what the Boston Bruins are really made of and make a good game of it."
Mark Recchi on Sunday's re-match with Detroit
"They did, absolutely. They dictated it and now we have to go to their building and dictate it."
Mark Recchi on the Red Wings dictating the style of play tonight