DETROIT – The last time the Detroit Red Wings went six straight games without a victory at home , Scotty Bowman was their coach, The Russian Five was in full force and Steve Yzerman was nine years away from retirement.

Yup, it's been that long.

It was the 1996-97 season and the Red Wings went six home games without a victory from Dec. 30 until Jan. 29. They lost twice to Phoenix, once apiece to Dallas and Chicago, and they tied Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

That's right, it was so long ago that NHL games still ended in ties.

The 2013-14 Red Wings matched that streak Tuesday night, when the Winnipeg Jets handed them a 3-2 shootout loss at Joe Louis Arena. That gave the Red Wings an 0-1-5 record in their last six home games – four of which went to overtime.

While nobody is ready to be so bold as to predict the Red Wings will finish this season the way the 1996-97 team did – those Red Wings won the first of back-to-back Stanley Cups – there were some encouraging signs in the loss to the Jets.

• The power play, which was 1-for-18 in the previous six games and 3-for-29 in the last 10, scored both goals against the Jets.

• The Red Wings killed all three penalties they picked up, including a slashing minor to Jakub Kindl with 1:04 left in overtime that gave the Jets a 4-on-3 manpower advantage.

• And they outshot the Jets 43-21, including 16-2 in the third period. The 43 shots are a season high.

"We didn't win but I thought we played good," said coach Mike Babcock. "I liked our game today, start to finish. We made some mistakes ... but I liked our penalty kill, I liked our power play, I liked our game. I feel real good. To me it's going in the right direction. It's real positive game for us.

"I'm a big believer that you keep plugging. Sometimes you win games when you're playing real well that you should probably lose. I thought this was a game we could have won easy tonight. To me, that's going in the right direction. We just got to be positive about what's going on and keep plugging."

But there were also some concerns, especially when it comes to scoring goals.

The Red Wings continue to struggle offensively as they've scored just nine goals during their last four games. Not surprisingly, they have an 0-1-3 record in that stretch.

They're still struggling to get secondary scoring as the top line has been on the ice for eight of those nine goals. That included both goals vs. Winnipeg.

Pavel Datsyuk has three of the aforementioned nine goals – including both vs. Winnipeg – Henrik Zetterberg also has three, Todd Bertuzzi has one and defenseman Adam Almquist picked up the other while playing with the top line.

"It's tough when we don't get two points," Zetterberg said. "We did a lot of good things and today I think we played solid defense, created enough chances to win and (Jimmy Howard) played good enough to win the game. But we can't find a way to go all the way. It's frustrating. It's tough. We want to win, but right now we can't find a way.

"You have to take positive things now. It is tough when you can't get a W. We did a lot of good things. We played good in our own end. We played a little tighter. We had better forechecks, we scored two on the power play, we played good on the PK. Obviously you're going to find things that aren't good that will happen in games, but we just have to keep plugging away and get ready for the next game.

"That's all we can do right now, keep sticking together, believe in what we're doing and eventually we will get rewarded for our play and we'll get some wins."

Datsyuk, who scored twice on the power play for the first time in his career during a regular-season game, tied Nicklas Lidstrom for 10th place on the club's all-time goals list with 264.

But Datsyuk failed to score in the shootout, when Daniel Alfredsson was the lone Detroit player to beat Ondrej Pavelec, who stopped Todd Bertuzzi on the Red Wings' final attempt to give the Jets their third straight win and square their record at 9-9-2.

Bryan Little and Zach Bogosian scored in regulation for Winnipeg, which got shootout goals from Devin Setoguchi and Andrew Ladd, who is 5-for-5 in shootouts this season to lead the NHL.

Despite their six-game home skid, the Red Wings (9-5-5) are tied for second in the Atlantic Division with Boston, three points behind Tampa Bay.

"During the season you're going to have your ups and downs and right now we're in a bit of a slump," said defenseman Niklas Kronwall. "Tonight everyone really worked hard, we kept going after them, going after them. It didn't matter if we were down by a goal, we kept going after them.

"I think tonight was a step in the right direction. We played decent hockey for 60 minutes. If we keep playing like this, more often than not we're going to come away with two points."

The loss was also the Red Wings' 10th straight at home in overtime or a shootout. That's the longest streak in the NHL since 1986-87.