Trending: Capitals come back to beat Red Wings, 3-2

DETROIT-- The Red Wings felt they did several things well in Sunday's 3-2 loss to the defending Stanley Cup-champion Washington Capitals at Little Caesars Arena.
Yet a few miscues and an ineffective power play were the culprits which sealed the Wings' fate.

After Tom Wilson scored at 6:57 of the first period to give the Capitals the lead, the Wings roared back with goals by Anthony Mantha and Filip Hronek to take a 2-1 lead heading into the third period.
But Washington came on in the third, outshooting the Wings, 15-6, and scoring twice to skate away with two points.
It was a frustrating night for the Red Wings, who at times appeared to be overpassing the puck instead of shooting on Capitals goalie Braden Holtby, who faced 25 shots.
Detroit's power play let them down, never sustaining any pressure or generating quality scoring chances and finished the game 0-for-3.
Both Wings goals were nice plays with Mantha showing great quickness by stealing the puck at the Capitals blue line and beating Holtby five-hole and Hronek tipping in a perfect pass from Dylan Larkin to give the Wings the lead, but the Capitals took advantage of their opportunities. Michal Kempny's goal at 16:08 of the third proved to be the game winner.
With the loss, the Red Wings drop to 16-21-7. The Capitals improve to 25-12-4.
Up next, the Wings will close out their five-game homestand on Tuesday when they welcome the Montreal Canadiens to Motown. Washington's next game is also on Tuesday when they host the Philadelphia Flyers.
1. Anthony Mantha: Although Mantha did not score in his return from injury, as Darren Helm did, Mantha was dangerous against the Nashville Predators. But Mantha did not wait long to get back on the scoresheet. Mantha picked up the puck in the offensive zone and went to the net, beating Holtby through the legs at 14:08 of the first period for his 10th goal of the season. It was an unassisted goal. Mantha becomes the fifth Wings player to reach double-digit goals this season. Larkin has 18, Andreas Athanasiou has 15, Gustav Nyquist and Tyler Bertuzzi also have 10 goals. Mantha finished with 21 shifts for 15:13, had two shots, one giveaway, two takeaways and was even.

Quotable: "I saw Vanny (Thomas Vanek) was in there on their guy and he came back towards his zone and I thought I had a step on him and took the puck away and went five-hole." -- Mantha
Quotable II: "He was a star the last game. Early in this game he was real good. He didn't sustain it quite as much but overall real happy. He's been a real good player, from the Dallas game in this building on. It's the consistency in moving his feet, just like any player that wants to take a step. It's one thing to be a good player in the NHL, the next step is really hard. You got to have elite, elite skill, you have to be on top of it every single game and that'll continue to be the challenge, making sure every single night he's at his best, or as close to his best as possible. I think from that Dallas game on, and then he got hurt, he was flying in the last game and was real good at times (tonight), the goal is a big-time goal, a big-player goal, so good for him." -- Wings coach Jeff Blashill
Quotable III: "Mo's been great for us ever since he came back. Both him and Helm are really bringing more energy and I think we got a little boost from that. Mo is one of those guys, he's a power forward and the way he's going right now, he can do everything really out there, both on the forecheck and creating chances out of nowhere because of that shot he's got. It's good to have him back big-time but we'd like to do more with the opportunity we had tonight." -- Niklas Kronwall
2. Filip Hronek: When Hronek was with the Wings out of training camp after injuries to several veterans on the blue line, he said that he hadn't gotten comfortable. The team eventually sent the rookie defenseman back to Grand Rapids, where he returned to the form he had as an AHL All-Star last season. When the Wings called Hronek back up on Dec. 14, Hronek had 18 points in 20 AHL games, including an eight-game point streak for the Griffins. Hronek carried that confidence with him back to Detroit. While it has not been perfect, notably a rough minus-3 outing in a 5-1 loss at Dallas Dec. 29, Hronek has looked more comfortable overall. At 6:48 of the second, Larkin saw Hronek rushing to the net and passed him the puck just as he arrived, enabling Hronek to perfectly tip the puck past Holtby. Nyquist got the second assist, his team-leading 26th. It was Hronek's third goal of the season. Hronek has three points in his last two games (1-2-3). Hronek finished with 26 shifts for 18:49, had three shots, one giveaway, one takeaway and was even.

Quotable: "He's out there on a consistent basis in the last number of games against the best players lots of times. Those are real players - Ovechkin, (Evgeny) Kuznetsov, (Nicklas) Backstrom, (T.J.) Oshie, so on, I better say Wilson - he's played real well. He had one really bad game in Dallas. But what I like about it is he came back from that game and has been good ever since. Something him and I talked about was making sure you put it behind you, have a short memory, and he's done a real good job of that. So is he making a statement? I think every time you play you got a chance to make a statement one way or the other and he's had a number of good statements." -- Blashill
3. Special teams: When there is very little separating teams in the NHL these days, it often happens that the team that has the edge in special teams wins the game. By all appearances, that battle was a draw as the Wings went 0-for-3 on the power play and the Capitals went 0-for-4. But the Capitals were able to create some momentum and chaos during their man-advantage opportunities while the Wings had a harder time. One area of note for the Wings on the penalty kill was the willingness of players to block shots. Nick Jensen and Kronwall led the way with three blocked shots apiece. Jensen had a memorable block early in the third when he blocked Alex Ovechkin's power-play attempt. Ovechkin has a rocket of a shot and Jensen was in visible pain as he went to the bench. On that same kill, Jacob de la Rose also blocked an Ovechkin shot and had trouble getting off the ice, going to the dressing room for a while before returning to the game later in the period.
Quotable: "The first period we passed up twice for sure real scoring chances to not shoot, so that's something we talked about after the first. I don't know the rest of the game five-on-five if I saw that as much. That was specifically our forwards. I thought our D had a good shooting mentality but our forwards had opportunities to shoot but didn't. Our power play wasn't good enough. I don't know if it was passing up shots or not being in the zone. You got to win a puck battle to have the puck and we didn't do a good enough job on that. Our power play's got to be better than that for certain. I did think our penalty kill was very good, though. It was the same spot (de la Rose) got hurt the other night on a block. He was able to come back and play. I think he's going to be OK but what a job blocking, that was unreal." -- Blashill

Quotable II: "We need to set it up, we need to get into the zone and figure out a way to get it in deep and win our one-on-one battles, from there once we're set up the chances come. It's hard, you lose momentum in the game. You try and build something, you get a power play, it's exciting and then you don't do anything with it, so you go back there and they're in your face 5-on-5 and then it's just hard to battle back from there." -- Mantha
Quotable III: "There was a lot of sacrifice, guys sacrificing their bodies. Guys had some huge blocks on the PK. I think that's why we were successful on the PK. At the same time, we couldn't find a way to win and we have to do that. It means the world to me. They don't have on half the equipment that I do and they're out there sacrificing their bodies against guys like Ovi and the other night (Nashville's P.K.) Subban. It means a lot to me." -- Howard