RECAP: McLellan gets first victory as Red Wings’ head coach, is ‘happy for the guys’ after taking 4-2 decision over Capitals

DETROIT -- Sunday night at Little Caesars Arena featured some special milestones, as Todd McLellan notched his first win as head coach of the Detroit Red Wings and Patrick Kane became the second U.S.-born skater in NHL history to record his 1,300th career point in a 4-2 victory over the Washington Capitals.

“There were a lot of moments in the game, whether it was penalty kill or some backcheck-type scenarios that were important to us that we had worked on the morning before, and we saw that in the game,” McLellan said. “So that’s progress, and I’m happy for the guys to win. It obviously hasn’t been real good. You can feel it when you walk around. They worked real hard yesterday and were rewarded today, so I’m happy for them. But tomorrow, we got to go back to work again.”

Goalie Alex Lyon’s 26 saves helped Detroit (14-18-4; 32 points) end a four-game losing streak. Manning the crease in the second half of a back-to-back road set for Washington (24-10-2; 50 points), netminder Charlie Lindgren denied 23 shots.

“Going into the game, I think there were a lot of positive vibes even though we lost the last game 5-2,” said Kane, who recorded a power-play goal and an assist for his fifth multi-point game of the season. “Just energy from that game and not quitting, then practice yesterday and what we wanted to accomplish coming into this game.”

The Red Wings scored all their goals in the first period. Alex DeBrincat gave them a 1-0 lead just 3:19 into the game, tipping in Ben Chiarot’s shot from the point after Moritz Seider pulled off a spin move at the blue line before distributing the puck.

Detroit added another goal, this one on the power play, when Kane’s snipe from the top of the right face-off circle found twine to make it 2-0 at 6:44 of the first period. Erik Gustafsson and Lucas Raymond picked up the assists on Kane’s sixth goal of the campaign.

At 12:04 of the first period, captain Alex Ovechkin scored his second goal in as many nights to bring the Capitals back within 2-1.

But just 31 seconds later, DeBrincat answered for the Red Wings by depositing Kane’s backhand feed that slid through the slot to make it 3-1. Andrew Copp collected the secondary assist on DeBrincat’s second goal of the game.

“Up 2-0 and they make it 2-1, we knew it was a big shift,” Kane said. “To make it 3-1, those are momentum shifts, right? That gets the momentum right back on our side, so that was a big goal.”

With the primary helper on DeBrincat’s 15th tally of the year, Kane joined some exclusive red, white and blue company. Now, only Livonia, Mich., native Mike Modano (1,374) has more career NHL points as an American-born skater than Kane.

“You play a lot of hockey and play a lot of games, your numbers have a chance to get up there,” Kane said. “Nice to reach that milestone, and to do it on a play like that with Cat finishing it off is pretty fun.”

Raymond extended it to 4-1 at 14:18 of the opening frame, following up on captain Dylan Larkin’s shot attempt that was initially stopped by Lindgren. A secondary assist on Raymond’s 15th goal of the season was awarded to Joe Veleno, who has five points in his last nine games.

Lyon shut the door on Connor McMichael’s breakaway try with 6:11 to play in what finished as a scoreless second period.

Cutting the Red Wings’ lead to 4-2, Nic Dowd shoveled in a loose puck from just outside the crease at 10:27 of the third period.

“I thought our gas tank got a little bit empty near the end, or halfway through the game,” McLellan said. “Real good teams have good gas tanks and are able to keep their foot on the gas. That can be physical, but I also think it can be mental. When you haven’t won a lot, you do what you have to do to try to protect everything.”

Washington pushed hard to trim its deficit, even getting a late-game power play with Lindgren pulled, but Detroit ensured the visitors didn’t close the gap any further.

“The concepts we talked about were put into play 5-on-4 and 6-on-4,” McLellan said. “They handed it really well. Alex made saves when he had to make saves. We got some clears when we needed to get clears. We got some fresh guys on the ice when we needed to get fresh guys on the ice. Even if they had scored in that situation, I still thought we handled it fairly well.”

NEXT UP: In their annual New Year’s Eve matchup, the Red Wings will take on the Pittsburgh Penguins at Little Caesars Arena on Tuesday night.

POSTGAME QUOTES

McLellan on if he felt the Red Wings played with some flow

“The fear of approaching practice the way we did yesterday was we were going to get in the way as a coaching staff and make them even more mechanical. But we needed to take that time to lay the foundation for some of the things we wanted to do, and then challenge them just to play hockey. That’s really important. You have good instincts, use them. I think we saw a bit of a combination of both, some structure and freedom to play.”

McLellan on how Detroit defended Washington’s zone entries

“We gave up a goal on one. That’s exactly what we tried to work, so I don’t mind if guys make mistakes through effort. It gives us an opportunity tomorrow to address it, and let’s get better off of it. It wasn’t omission that caused that. It was commission.”

DeBrincat on the Red Wings four-goal first period

“I think practice yesterday gave us some energy. Cleared some things up we needed to do and obviously, get jump right off the bat. I think we need to continue to do that, be ready to play each night and we’ll be good.”