Postgame: Bruins 3, Red Wings 2 (SO)

The word out of the Red Wings dressing room after their 3-2 shootout loss to the Boston Bruins on Wednesday was that goalie Jimmy Howard stole the team a point, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who would disagree.

As a whole, Detroit’s skaters spent much of the game on their heels, with Howard bailing them out. Howard especially came up huge in the final minutes of regulation, with several key stops to force overtime and get Detroit a point in the standings.

Of course, Howard looked relatively awful in the shootout, but considering he’s the reason the team got there it’s hard to fault him for the failure in the tiebreaker.

Speaking of the gimmick… Is Andrej Nestrasil an AHL shootout specialist and I just don’t know it? I get that with the team down Pavel Datsyuk and Todd Bertuzzi and Daniel Alfredsson they’re missing a lot of their shootout regulars, but I’ve got six guys (Gustav Nyquist, Tomas Tatar, Tomas Jurco, Johan Franzen, Riley Sheahan, Henrik Zetterberg) that I go with before Nestrasil. First coaching decision I’ve questioned this season.

So far we’ve seen two games the Wings played well enough to win and one they deserved to lose, and they’ve got a 1-1-1 record. Not bad, not great. We’re not going to see the team get blown up for this loss, nor should we. Even if the Jeff Petry rumors are intriguing.