DETROIT - After yielding too many odd-man rushes in their previous two games, the Detroit Red Wings made sure Winnipeg's big, fast and talented forwards didn't easily skate up the ice Tuesday.

They didn't just wave their sticks at puck-carries and resemble turnstiles, they played through bodies by taking away space.

"Not necessarily big hits, just making sure there were no stick-checks," coach Jeff Blashill said. "Guys had to go through us to get up the ice and that's a really important thing.

"It's angles, it's stopping on people, it's stopping on pucks, it's not stick-checking - what I call poke and hope."

They were harder to play against. That, along with their urgency at the start and determination to stretch their lead in the third period resulted in a 5-1 victory. That's how they must play during the final four games of this homestand, which continues Saturday afternoon against St. Louis (1 p.m., Fox Sports Detroit), another top team.

Battling drills in practice Monday paid off, and they did more of it on Wednesday.

"The past few practices we've been working on not swinging away, less stick-checks and playing more through guys," Danny DeKeyser said. "Getting your stick in there and then kind of playing through and finishing the hits from time to time when you can, not giving them room to operate, easy room. If they get room, they got to earn it. We're trying to make it harder on opponents to get to our net, harder for them to get the red line and chip it in."

The Red Wings are not anywhere near the biggest or most physical team in the NHL, but as Frans Nielsen put it: "You can't just skill your way through this league anymore."

They must play with more grit.

"It's not poking, hoping; playing physical, not giving them easy ice through all parts of the ice. Just being hard on them," Justin Abdelkader said. "We've practiced that the last few practices with our two-on-twos and three-on-threes, making sure that we're hard on those battles."

They must be "ultra-competitive" every night, Blashill said.

"There's probably some teams that can get away with maybe not that," Blashill said. "I think human nature is you're not necessarily at that line every night. But we got to be as close to that line of ultra-competitive as humanly possible. We got to be beyond the norm on that."

Three days between games gives the Red Wings a couple of practice days to work on physical battles.

"The other thing is making sure we're not giving up easy goals," Blashill said. "I think (the Jets) only had three rush chances, whereas in Montreal they had three breakaways in a period maybe."

Blashill said he never questioned that his message wasn't getting through during the recent seven-game winless skid (0-4-3).

"I think our guys are totally bought in to what it takes to play," he said.

But, as Blashill and players said Wednesday, it's just one game. They must continually repeat the process.

Nielsen disagrees with anyone who believes the Red Wings aren't talented enough to be successful.

"It's a little bit mind-boggling sometimes when you look around this room and see how much talent we have," Nielsen said. "We just find ways to beat ourselves. Can't stop the bleeding when it's going on, for some reason.

"It was good to see us show up (Tuesday) and play that way for almost 60 minutes. We got to realize that was only one game, got to learn from it and know what we did right and keep doing that."

Gustav Nyquist, who led the way with two goals and one assist, said, "It's only one win and we had a long slump, so we still got a ways to go and a lot of points to catch up in the standings to be where we want to be."