DETROIT – Todd McLellan spent a couple of days this week shouting instructions to players during two long, intense and physical practices.

The Detroit Red Wings had several issues to solve and the work they put in on Tuesday and Wednesday paid off Thursday with a 6-3 victory over Anaheim.

“It was a little bit of a wake-up call,” Moritz Seider said. “As we all know, Todd’s very demanding and very detailed and maybe it was exactly what we needed to get back on track.”

The Red Wings (10-7-0) snapped a three-game losing streak. They scored a pair of power-play goals after going 1 for 20 in their previous five games. They killed all three Anaheim power plays after allowing three power-play goals Sunday in a 5-1 loss to Chicago. Their six goals equaled their total from their previous five games.

A rare three-day break in this season’s compressed schedule due to the Olympics allowed them to hit the practice ice hard.

“You take the lesson, then you take the test, and you know, we scored some goals, just simple, hard, playoff-type goals,” McLellan said. “When you think about hard goals that feeder shots that go to the net and you got a battle and then the other way with some of their feeder shots, we were sacrificing in front of our net. We stepped into some things, goaltenders made saves.

“So, it is rewarding, but we can’t just take the lesson one day and forget about it next week. That lesson is supposed to stay with us now.”

The biggest lesson was traffic at the net. That’s what led to goals by Seider and DeBrincat on the power play and Axel Sandin-Pellikka at even strength.

“It’s the D getting (the shot) through. It’s forwards getting through the goalie’s eyes and not getting boxed out,” DeBrincat said. “There’s a lot of things that go into it. But for us forwards, it’s just a lot of hard work to get to the front of the net. Get a couple more greasy goals.

“It’s not necessarily standing there and getting in the goalie’s eyes but just making him lose the puck for one second. I think that changes a lot. You talk to the goalies on our team, and they obviously hate that, so we got to do it to their team a lot more.”

It’s not as simple as crashing the net with bodies.

“When I started to coach, Jacques Lemaire was mentoring me a little bit in the minors and he used to talk everybody about get to the net, get to the net,” McLellan said. “And players tend to do what the coaches tell them to. So, everybody goes to the net and all of a sudden three offensive players are there, three defensive players are there, and you can’t even see the goaltender, and it just hits somebody. The puck never gets there.

“There are certain spots that you need to be, and you need to do certain things in those spots in and around the net. Some teams are really good at it; some teams are still working on it. We’re one of those teams. But arriving on time, coming down on rebounds rather than chasing them away from the net, certain things with goaltenders’ eyes, they’re all really important and we’re trying to stress them and get our group to do.”

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