Rare goal feast propels Wings past Islanders

Detroit — The Red Wings said they needed a win and a bunch of other stuff.

After dropping in the standings on the weakness of two losses out of the gate after the All-Star break, they said they needed points.

The Wings said they wanted to start playing a lot better at home than their 11-10-5 pace through the first four months, especially starting a stretch of five games in Joe Louis Arena in nine days.

More goals was a high priority, too, with the offense lagging for much of the season, and plenty of puck possession and scoring chances, especially against the Panthers on Thursday failing to result in more tallies.

BOX SCORE: Red Wings 5, Islanders 1

And they have wanted more scoring from their defensemen throughout this and recent seasons.

A 5-1 win tends to fulfill a lot of desires.

Skating better than they have in many recent games at home, and finishing more plays when scoring chances evolved, the Red Wings walloped the Islanders in a matinee game Saturday that included an unusual, long delay for problems with the ice surface at the start of the third period.

Along the way, they checked off many of their “we gottas,” as in, “We’ve got to do this, we’ve got to do that.”

“Obviously, it’s imperative that we get our wins here at home,” said Mike Green, the free agent acquired in the offseason to provide some scoring punch from the back end, who scored his fourth goal of the season at an important juncture on the power play.

“We haven’t been getting our points and it was a big night to sort of get in the right direction, and I thought the guys played really well tonight.”

It was Green’s second goal in consecutive games, and sixth point in the past nine.

Defenseman Kyle Quincey, who joined a long rush spearheaded by Pavel Datsyuk on a set play in the first period, also scored after Dylan Larkin fed him with a perfect backhand assist.

Asked to narrate the goal and the fine feed from the rookie, Quincey flashed his wit.

“Yeah, but the finish was a little nicer!” he joked, about his second goal in his 16th game of an injury-shortened season.

“No, Larks made a great play, Pav before that. And I just tried to ramp her up top shelf, I guess.”

Coach Jeff Blashill, who said he liked “the process” against the Panthers despite the loss, said the win was a matter of finishing scoring chances and playing just a bit better overall.

“I think we need every win we can,” Blashill said.

“How the last two had gone? You’re going to lose some games. I thought we played very well in Florida, I said that after the game. So, I wasn’t worried about that.”

Keeping two-game losing streaks from growing is important, though, Blashill said. As is winning at home.

“At home, our process has been good," he said. "We haven’t gotten good results at home. But today we got results.

“We didn’t do everything perfectly, by any stretch. But the one thing we did do was score goals. And we didn’t score lucky goals. We scored real hockey goals.”

And they started by scoring first, which is always important — especially after a slow start.

Outshot 9-2 through 14:25 of the first period, they got a fine display of puck control and playmaking from Gustav Nyquist, whose two assists give him 15 for the season.

Taking the puck in the offensive zone, he skated a long arc through the right wing, avoiding players and maintaining the offensive initiative for long enough to feed Tomas Jurco to his left.

Jurco buried a brisk shot for his third goal of the season.

Then at 18:03, after minor fracas in the Wings crease resulted in offsetting roughing penalties to Green and Brock Nelson, Datsyuk rushed up ice from his own end. Larkin and Quincey sprinted along with him.

Datsyuk deftly fed Larkin, to his right and Larkin put a precise backhand pass toward Quincey, who wasted little time firing it behind Jaroslav Halak.

The Wings generated comparatively more offense in the second period, helped in part by a five-on-three power play beginning at 7:13.

Just 19 seconds in, they got the big goal from Green that gave them a three-goal bulge.

He scored from the high slot, assisted by Brad Richards and Datsyuk, who also finished with two assists for 20 for the season.

At 10:20, the Wings achieved a truly rare feat in their low-scoring season, a four-goal lead.

Andreas Athanasiou received the puck from Nyquist amid a scrum at the Islanders blue line, near the Wings bench. The rookie skated toward the net and let go a shot that Halak kicked out with his right pad.

But Tatar was there, driving to the net. He beat Halak with a skillful backhand shot.

In the third period, Larkin opened the scoring.

After taking the puck from Richards, he skated behind the Islanders net before losing possession along the sideboard. But the tenacious Larkin got the puck back before the Islanders could get control.

He did an about-face, skated directly to the slot and let a wrist shot go for his 18th goal of the season.

Richards picked up his second assist of the game on the goal, and now has 10.

Almost unbelievably given the course of the season, the Wings had a four-goal lead at the end of the second period.

“Yeah, it was definitely nice to play with the lead, a nice cushion,” Quincey said. “We don’t do that much.”

For Petr Mrazek, who held his mates in during their slow start and stopped 28 of 29 shots as the Islanders outshot the Red Wings by nine, the big lead must have seemed like life on a different planet.

“It’s big when you’re up four-nothing after two periods,” he said. “We were talking about, 'We’ve got this cushion and hold it.' And we did a good job today.”

The start of the third period was delayed for a considerable time after one of the Zamboni machines picked up the anchor of one of the nets and, undetected, scraped it along the ice, leaving a considerable, zipper-like gouge that ran from goal in one end out past the blue line.

With the Wings eager to finish, there was some talk about playing the third period at a later date.

Instead, long repairs and a long wait for the patch to freeze fully kept both teams in the dressing rooms.

If there was any concern about the extended interruption upsetting the Wings' intentions, their brilliant rookie Larkin took care of things straight away with his goal at 2:56.

In addition to his 18th goal, Larkin now has 19 assists this season.

The Islanders got a power-play goal at from John Tavares at 4:07 to spoil Mrazek’s shutout.

gregg.krupa@detroitnews.com

twitter.com/greggkrupa