WASHINGTON -- The Detroit Red Wings controlled the puck all night long and outshot the NHL’s highest-scoring team in its own building 46-23.

They held two-time league MVP Alex Ovechkin and the highest-scoring defenseman in the game, Mike Green, without a shot on goal.

They led with less than seven minutes remaining in the third period.

But they left the Verizon Center empty-handed Tuesday, as the Washington Capitals scored two goals in 46 seconds late in regulation and got terrific goaltending from Jose Theodore to pull out a 3-2 victory.

“I feel good because I thought our team played real well, real hard,’’ Red Wings coach Mike Babcock said. “We basically dominated from start to finish. They’re an opportunistic team. They got real good offensive flair and they were able to capitalize.

“Their goalie was outstanding. But I like the way we played. We played fast, we were on top of them. If we continue to play the way we’re playing we’ll be just fine.’’

Brian Rafalski scored with 8:53 to play to give the Red Wings a 2-1 lead. But a tripping penalty to Todd Bertuzzi less than two minutes later shifted the momentum.

Nicklas Backstrom tied the game with a power-play goal at 13:15, making a move around Brad Stuart and whipping a shot past Chris Osgood on the short side. David Steckel then scored what proved to be the winning goal at 14:01, backhanding the puck past Osgood from the slot after a shot by Alexander Semin was deflected in front.

“Stupid, stupid penalty by me. Just careless with my stick at the wrong time,’’ Bertuzzi said. “Then they come back and score another one right away. It’s pretty deflating.’’

Osgood, making his first start since Dec. 20, said, “They scored a nice goal to tie it up, obviously, but then the bounce (on Steckel’s goal), I’m still not sure how it went in.’’

Babcock said Jimmy Howard, who had started the previous 12 games, will start Thursday in Minnesota.

“I just think it was an opportunity for (Osgood) tonight,’’ Babcock said. “I thought we gave him real good support.

“I thought we were tilting the rink. You do good things, normally good things happen. Tonight was one of those few times when you outplay the other team and it didn’t go your way.’’

Red Wings captain Nicklas Lidstrom said his team battled hard for 50 minutes and lamented its inability to score on five power-play chances, including one in the final five minutes.

“I thought it got away from us a little bit in the last 10 minutes,’’ Lidstrom said. “They scored a nice goal to tie it up. The third one I couldn’t really tell from the bench, it was bouncing and then it was in our net.’’

Steckel called it “lucky.’’

“The puck just went to the net. I just happened to be there,’’ Steckel said. “I saw it bouncing. It was just trying to get it on net, just a tip. I thought it went wide at first until I looked back.’’

Detroit’s Dan Cleary opened the scoring at 4:17 of the second period with his 10th goal of the season. He misfired on a forehand attempt while staring at an open net but scored on the second effort, backhanding the puck in off Theodore from a bad angle while falling down.

Matt Bradley tied it at 1-1 with 1:55 to play in the second period, capitalizing on a defensive breakdown to get behind Jonathan Ericsson and beat Osgood.

“We need points right now, that’s what hurts even more,’’ Osgood said. “The way we played, we can take a positive out of that.’’

Red Wings forward Henrik Zetterberg took little solace in his team’s domination, however.

“You can say we played a good game, but in the end we didn’t score enough goals," Zetterberg said. “We had a lot of chances, we should be able to put more pucks in.’’