Henrik Zetterberg and Tomas Holmstrom scored in the first period, then Chris Osgood finished with his first shutout of the season to give the Detroit Red Wings a 2-0 win over the visiting Boston Bruins.

Osgood made 29 saves Tuesday night. He also got help from the posts behind him to prevent a goal in both the first and second periods for the 50th shutout of his career.

"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."

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

The Bruins, who have scored just three goals in their last four games, were in trouble early after giving up two goals a few minutes apart in the first period.

"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 Red Wings were able to coast after Zetterberg and Holmstrom scored at the 14:21 and 17:43 marks of the first period.

Zetterberg's third goal of the season came at the 14:21 mark, two seconds into a power play after Pavel Datsyuk pushed the puck toward the net from the left circle off a faceoff.

Holmstrom's eighth goal in 13 games came at 17:43, after Datsyuk made a nifty drop pass off an up-ice pass from Todd Bertuzzi.

"He's got eyes in his back," Holmstrom said.

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

Boston pulled Thomas with about 1½ 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.