BOSTON - The Boston Bruins were depleted by injuries and have been scuffling the past month. They were whipped in their previous game and were bound to battle back with a better effort at home Monday.

The Detroit Red Wings knew this and vowed to be prepared and start on time.

Instead, they were flat from the start and chased the puck most of the night, resulting in what coach Mike Babcock described as an embarrassing, ridiculous and unacceptable performance in a 5-2 loss at TD Garden.

The Red Wings (19-9-9) yielded season highs in goals and shots (45).

"As a group and as a coaching staff we pride ourselves in preparation and having our team ready," Babcock said. "No good. Leadership group, no good. Individually, no good. Not good enough. No way. It's real simple for me: You're either going to work in the games or you're going to work in practice, but we're going to work. That is unacceptable."

It sounds like they will have an interesting practice Tuesday at Joe Louis Arena as they prepare to host the New Jersey Devils on Wednesday.

"It's like anything; if you're humbled and embarrassed by the way you play you do something about it," Babcock said. "I can tell you I am, because that's ridiculous."

The Bruins, coming off a 6-2 loss Saturday in Columbus and missing two key forwards, Patrice Bergeron and Milan Lucic, jumped all over the Red Wings in the first period, outshooting them 19-12 and taking a 3-1 lead.

"We just didn't have it going from the beginning, none of us, myself included," Red Wings goaltender Jimmy Howard said. "I'm more than capable of stealing a game for the team and carrying that workload, but tonight just wasn't meant to be.

"We knew they were going to be angry, the way they got handled the other night in Columbus. Everyone was talking around here in Boston that they were going to come at us hard and they won every battle in front of the net, theirs and ours. It's no surprise what the score was."

The score would have been much worse if not for Howard.

"He can't be standing on his head every night," Niklas Kronwall said. "I thought he couldn't do much more than he did. He kept us in the game long enough. I thought Howie was outstanding again tonight. The rest of us got to be better than that."

The Red Wings hung around for a while in a bid to win their third game in a row when trailing after two periods. They had some good chances to tie it early in the third period before Seth Griffith's power-play goal at 5:11 gave Boston a 4-2 lead and basically squashed the comeback bid. Chris Kelly's empty-net goal with 2:26 remaining sealed it.

"You can't play catch-up hockey, it's ridiculous," Babcock said. "We're grown men; we should know how to prepare. We got to be better than this. Not good."

Tomas Tatar's power-play goal at 15:10 of the second cut Boston's lead to 3-2.

"I think we worked ourselves into the game," Red Wings captain Henrik Zetterberg said. "The second half of this game we played OK, but the hole was a little too big tonight."

The Bruins put the Red Wings on their heels immediately after the opening faceoff. Reilly Smith scored at 2:44.

The Red Wings tied it at 11:21 on Justin Abdelkader's no-look backhand shot past Tuukka Rask.

But the Bruins re-established control by getting goals from Gregory Campbell at 16:12 and Carl Soderberg at 17:25.

"They won all the battles, all the races, they competed way harder than us," Babcock said. "Howie kept us in the game and gave us a chance in Ottawa (Saturday). Howie kept us in the game when we were down one goal in the third tonight."

Babcock said his team knew it was "going to have a tiger by the tail" and had to compete hard. But they didn't do it.

"With our structure the way it is, if we don't have puck pressure they're going to end up doing that to you," Babcock said. "So if we're not going to work hard, we got to change the way we play. But I think what we'll do is we'll choose to work hard."

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