Red Wings 2, Bruins 0

Return home helps Red Wings

Chris McCosky / The Detroit News

Detroit -- So much for the old axiom about teams struggling in the first game back after a long trip.

The Red Wings played another solid defensive game Tuesday -- despite having two of their top defensemen, Jonathan Ericsson and Brian Rafalski, out because of the flu -- and Chris Osgood recorded his 50th career shutout, beating the Boston Bruins, 2-0.

Henrik Zetterberg and Tomas Holmstrom scored in a 3:22 span of the first period to provide Osgood with all the offense he would need.

Osgood, now six wins shy of 400 in his career, stopped 29 shots. He has allowed one goal in the last six periods after he was pulled in the first period in Vancouver last week.

The Wings, 3-0-1 in their last four, are 4-1-1 at home.

The Wings had converted just two of their last 18 power play chances and coach Mike Babcock talked after the morning skate about finding the workable combinations. Why not just go back to what has always worked?

He put Pavel Datsyuk and Zetterberg back together (they were separated after Valtteri Filppula broke his wrist) and they combined to score the game's first goal just two seconds into their first power play chance.

Datsyuk actually lost the faceoff to Patrice Bergeron, but Zetterberg beat everybody to it and blasted it past goalie Tim Thomas (Davison).

Datsyuk set up the second goal, as well. He took Todd Bertuzzi's long pass, somehow got control of a bouncing puck as he was driving to the net and being hounded by All-Star defenseman Zdeno Chara and deftly dropped it back to Tomas Holmstrom.

Holmstrom poked it past Thomas for his eighth goal of the season and his first against the Bruins. He has now scored at least one goal against every team in the NHL.

Except for that 3:22 stretch, the Bruins had the territorial advantage in the first two periods, fired 21 shots at Osgood, ringing two off goal posts but not getting any past him. The Bruins were credited with 13 scoring chances in the first 40 minutes.

Osgood made 13 stops in the first period, none better than two he made on Marco Sturm on the same rush. He made a sprawling save on Sturm's first shot, a backhander, then with a swim motion managed to keep Sturm's second whack out of the net.

A minute later, Chara banged one off the post.

Early in the second, Osgood made a quick toe save on Blake Wheeler, foiling a three-on-two rush.

He stood strong in the crease on the next rush, too, stopping a crashing Brad Marchand, who had beaten Doug Janik along the boards.

Later, Michael Ryder blasted one off the post.

The Wings effectively killed two Bruins power plays in the first two periods. They allowed one shot on the first, none on the second. At that point, the Bruins were 0-for-15 on the power play.

Ice chips

Ville Leino didn't last long on the fourth line. Early in the first period Babcock moved him to the third line (with Darren Helm and Patrick Eaves ) and sent Kris Draper down to the fourth line with Kirk Maltby and Justin Abdelkader . Leino had been benched for the game Saturday in Calgary. He even saw brief duty on the second power play unit with Todd Bertuzzi and Danny Cleary .

This was the first meeting between these two teams since March of 2007.

chris.mccosky@detnews.com (313) 222-1489