WASHINGTON — The Red Wings' mothers couldn't have asked for a better road trip.

Playing in front of their moms, the Wings put forth one of their best road games of the season Saturday, defeating the Washington Capitals, 5-2.

John Leonard, James van Riemsdyk, Elmer Soderblom, Moritz Seider and Dylan Larkin (empty net) scored Wings goals, and goaltender John Gibson stopped 24 shots and won his seventh consecutive decision as the Wings won their 20th game of the season (20-13-3).

"It was fun," said Soderblom, who has his mother Susanne on this trip. "It was real nice to get the win for them. Hopefully we can do the same thing tomorrow (at Little Caesars Arena, against Washington).

"It was unbelievable (having the moms around)."

Ironically, Leonard and van Riemsdyk have brothers on Washington — Ryan Leonard (injured) and Trevor van Riemsdyk (healthy scratch) — and each had big family turnouts for the game.

"They (Leonard's parents) were able to land this morning, around 8ish, and were able to swing by the hotel to say 'hi'," John Leonard said. "That was real cool. (Ryan) was able to swing by the hotel for 45 minutes (Friday night). I was able to catch up, and you can do Facetime and text and all those things, but face-to-face is a bit better."

Leonard opened the scoring just 1 minute, 5 seconds into the game. Leonard jumped on Soderblom's rebound in the slot and put a rebound past goaltender Logan Thompson for Leonard's first goal with the Wings.

The Wings dominated the first period, outshooting the Capitals 17-6 (outshooting them 41-26 in the game) and outskating Washington all over the ice.

"It was a good start," Red Wings coach Todd McLellan said. "These afternoon games, sometimes they favor the road team. You're at the hotel, you have your meal and come here and play. When you're at home, your rhythm is thrown off a bit. I don't know if that came into play today, but we did have a good first period."

It was more of the same in the second period, with van Riemsdyk scoring just 1:37 into the frame for his eighth goal. Seider banked a shot off the end board that slipped into the net-front, where van Riemsdyk got to the puck and flipped it past Thompson.

Soderblom made it 3-0 at 5:55, with his second goal. Marco Kasper fed a puck to the slot, where Soderblom outmuscled Capitals forward Dylan Strome and slipped a shot past Thompson.

Seider extended the lead to 4-0 with his fifth goal on what essentially turned into a two-on-none rush at 10:05.

Aliaksei Protas and Martin Fehervary scored for the Capitals.

Protas sliced the lead to 4-1 with his 12th goal, 31 seconds after Seider scored, and Fehervary's long blast made it 4-2 at 8:30 of the third period.

Washington appeared to cut the lead to one goal midway in the third period, but Protas was whistled for goaltender interference — and a challenge confirmed it — on an apparent goal by Jakob Chychrun. Larkin then scored an empty-net goal, his 18th goal, to clinch the victory.

"It's a lot easier to play against that team with the lead," McLellan said. "It's never easy to play against that team, but easier when you have the lead because they turn the momentum, as we saw, at any given moment. But we handled ourselves well for most of the night.

"Nobody was a superstar, but everyone contributed. We were able to roll four lines for the most part, and when Gibby was tested, and there were deflections and tips, he fought through to find. Our (defensemen) did a good job of clearing out the garbage.

"It was a good night but we're going to need more tomorrow (Sunday)."

The two teams play Sunday at Little Caesars Arena.

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