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The Red Wings' Pavel Datsyuk tries to skate around Boston's Milan Lucic in Game 2 Sunday.

(The Associated Press)

DETROIT – The Boston Bruins frustrated with the Detroit Red Wings with their physical play Sunday, before and after the whistles.

The Red Wings need to counter Tuesday in Game 3 at Joe Louis Arena (7:30 p.m., Fox Sports Detroit) – not with their fists or sticks, but with their legs.

Players and coach Mike Babcock stressed the need for speed. They need to outskate the Bruins, like they did in Game 1.

“A team always pushes back after a loss, they up the ante,” defenseman Brendan Smith said Monday, after an optional practice. “That’s something we’re going to have to do. We have to play our style, that’s what helped us against them this year.

“We need to use our speed, play fast. I don’t think they can keep up with us if we do that. We looked at it and we’re going to do it tomorrow.”

The faster Red Wings beat the Bruins 1-0 on Friday but lost 4-1 on Sunday in a chippy game filled with scrums after the whistle.

“They want to be physical and create all those scrums that we don’t need,” Smith said. “We need to be effective playing our style and in the end we’ll play really well and we’ll win.”

Said Gustav Nyquist: “I think every team tries to play their game to their strengths. One of our strengths is our speed. One of theirs is being physical. They’re going to try and do what they do best.”

Babcock said his team must be better in all areas.

“I thought our power-play breakouts and entries were awful. I thought our penalty-kill forecheck wasn’t good,” Babcock said. “They scored some easy goals we can’t have. I didn’t think we played fast or executed as good as we could. Give them credit, we were better than they were in Game 1 and we weren’t as good (in Game 2).”

Babcock added, “I just think for our team to be effective, we have to do what we do. If we want to have a scrum after every whistle and get into a cross-checking match after every whistle -- I assume they’re not letting you run people on icings anymore, they probably got that figured out after yesterday. Little things like that, I assume those things will be cleaned up.”

Tomas Jurco and Brian Lashoff were the only players who skated Monday among those who played Sunday.

Henrik Zetterberg (back) and Jonathan Ericsson (finger) joined Joakim Andersson, Todd Bertuzzi, Daniel Cleary, Mikael Samuelsson and Jonas Gustavsson on the ice. Zetterberg skated for only five minutes and wasn’t available afterward.