Bruins serve early notice

They post message to Cup champions

With less than four minutes remaining, Zdeno Chara coughed up the puck to Jiri Hudler in the Boston zone, giving the Detroit forward a chance to dent Boston's 4-1 lead.

Hudler cut into the slot and whacked a backhander on goal that Manny Fernandez snatched with his glove at 16:51, stamping an exclamation point on Boston's message to the defending champs:

This is our house. Our night. And our win.

"We can beat anybody in this league," Chara said last night when asked what he learned about his team. "We can play with any team in this league. But we haven't done anything but beat a few teams. We've got to keep going and keep pushing forward. We can't be satisfied with the results we have. We've just got to keep going forward and keep playing the way we are, and the results are going to take care of themselves."

The Red Wings had lost only one road game in regulation all season. But Fernandez and the Bruins dropkicked the Wings and their puck-possession game out of Boston, claiming a 4-1 victory over the reigning NHL champions.

"These guys we played tonight, they own the Stanley Cup," said coach Claude Julien. "They're a great hockey club. The one thing I think everybody noticed tonight is the skill level they have. They can control the play pretty good when they want to. For us to be able to beat them is certainly good for confidence and it gives us the next challenge when that one comes along."

With the Wings playing their puck-possession game at their best, the Bruins didn't record their first shot until the 12-minute mark of the first period.

"In the first 10 minutes, I thought we did a lot of watching," said Julien.

But the Bruins made their first attempt count, as Blake Wheeler buried one to give his club a 1-0 lead.

Michael Ryder, controlling the puck in the neutral zone, slipped the checks of forward Valtteri Filppula and defenseman Andreas Lilja to kick off a two-on-one rush against defenseman Niklas Kronwall. Ryder dished to Wheeler, who snapped an off-wing slingshot past a diving Ty Conklin at 12:00.

"He just won two battles," Wheeler said of Ryder. "That's the name of the game - winning battles. Rydes won a couple of battles there and gave us a two-on-one. The last two games especially, Rydes has been awesome. Hopefully, for the rest of the season, this is the Ryder you'll see, because he's been really, really, really good."

Just over four minutes later, the Bruins got their third shot on goal. With some traffic in front, Phil Kessel took a pass from Shane Hnidy and flipped a long-distance wrister that sailed past Conklin at 16:11.

At 8:01 of the second period, Chuck Kobasew ended Conklin's night. After Patrice Bergeron dug the puck out of the right corner, Kobasew got free in the slot for the center's feed. Kobasew banged a shot past Conklin to give the Bruins a 3-0 lead, prompting coach Mike Babcock to replace his starter with Chris Osgood. Conklin stopped only six of nine shots.

The Wings scored a power-play goal at 16:25 of the second when Hudler banked a bad-angle goal off traffic and past Fernandez. But after allowing 15 second-period shots, the Bruins limited the Wings to five in the third.

"They're a highly skilled team that is very good at jumping through holes, stretching your forwards out from your D, then blowing guys through the middle," said Dennis Wideman. "It makes it real tough to stand up and gap on them. In the second period, we got caught running around a bit. We didn't get the puck behind their D enough, so they broke out pretty cleanly and were coming at us. So as a group in the third, we stayed a little tighter in the neutral zone and we got in on the forecheck."

To close the scoring, David Krejci banged the rebound of a Wideman shot past Osgood at 6:51 of the third.

"Even if they're a puck-possession team, I really felt that if we moved the puck the way we could, got pucks in deep, started cycling, being strong on the puck, and using our points, we'd have a good opportunity," Julien said. "Basically, it was beating them a little bit at their own game, which is spending most of the night in their own end and controlling the play. It didn't necessarily happen that way, but at the same time, I think it was a matter of playing our game."