The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

Even when they spot their opponent four goals on the first nine shots, the Boston Bruins are unbeatable in November. In the eight games they’ve played in 19 days, which by the way is their busiest stretch of the year, they are 7-0-1 and have outscored opponents 34 to 14. The only loss, that in a shootout, was to the New York Rangers in a game the B’s led 2-0 with just under six minutes to go.

But consider this: their wild 7-4 win over the Sabres tonight was the first time all month they allowed more than two goals. It was also just about the wackiest goddamn game I’ve seen this season. The Sabres scored 1:41 in. The Bruins scored 1:18 later. Then the Sabres scored again 1:30 after that. Just 29 seconds later, they scored again. Boston answered 30 seconds later at 5:38. At 12:37 Buffalo made it 4-2, but Boston pulled back within one 31 seconds after that. The Sabres had to clear another puck off the line soon after that to hold onto the lead.

Bonkers.

But the Bruins grabbed the game by the scruff of its neck in the second period, outshooting Buffalo 12-8 and outscoring them 3-0. This was thanks in large part to Buffalo’s continual parade to the penalty box, which allowed Zdeno Chara to score a couple of booming power play goals wrapped around an even-strength goal from Chuck Kobasew to put the Bruins even, up, and then out of reach. Phil Kessel’s goal early in the third was all Lindy Ruff could stand from Ryan Miller, who left the game having surrendered seven goals on 20 shots (just slightly better than Pascal Leclaire’s gong show performance last night).

And while Manny Fernandez obviously fought the puck a little bit early on, he was solid after the first, though he was only asked to make 15 saves. It was, though, a game as choppy and without flow as a scoreline like that would indicate. Neither team could establish anything through the neutral zone and nor were they especially interested in maintaining offensive zone possession should they actually be lucky enough to gain it.

Chara had two goals, Kobasew had two goals, Tom Vanek had two goals, Dave Krejci scored and added two helpers and Marc Savard quietly had a goal and three assists to boost his total to 7-18-25 in 19 games, which is third-best in the league and Savard is still somehow undiscussed on the national stage.

But what this showed, to me at least, is that the Bruins’ early success is by no means a fluke. They’ve won just about every way you can this month. Big wins against Dallas, Toronto and Montreal in which they won 16-4 on aggregate show they can dominate. The wins of 3-1 over Buffalo and 2-1 over Chicago in a shootout show they can grind it out with highly-skilled teams if need be and still come out victorious. This win tonight shows that they can battle and overcome adversity, even despite shaky play from the backup netminder. The only nagging thing is that one game they blew against the Rangers. But if they can go the rest of the month without dropping a game — and with remaining opponents of Florida, a struggling Montreal, Buffalo again, the Islanders and Red Wings, it’s not entirely impossible — they won’t really be kicking themselves over one loss to the Rangers, to whom they are second in the conference by two points but benefit from three games in hand.

I didn’t really think it was possible, but as of right now, the Bruins are the best team in the East, and thus the one by which all others will be measured. It seems unlikely that anyone can match the varied skillset brought by the Bruins’ group of forwards (maybe Montreal, but they ain’t exactly going 2 for 6 on the powerplay these days). The D corps is clearly untouchable in the conference otherwise bereft of an imposing blue line that’s that deep at Nos. 1 to 6. And the goaltending, between Tim Thomas’ all-out awesomeness and Fernandez’s more-than-capable backup work despite tonight’s iffy performance, is unrivaled, perhaps in whole the league.

No one besides the Sharks are playing on the same level as the Bruins right now, and frankly I don’t think anyone in the East is even capable of it.

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The Lead

Bad news for the rest of the Southeast division regarding Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals: They’re heating up.

Ovie and the newly constituted Caps top line of he, Nicklas Backstrom and Alex Semin teamed with Mike Green to score all five Washington goals and pick up 13 combined points as the Capitals rolled over their only other competition for the division crown, the Carolina Hurricanes, 5-1.

Ovechkin, who had a goal and two assists, scored a vintage Ovie goal, breaking in on a 2-on-1 with Semin and performing a maneuver more commonly seen in the shootout at full speed to stake the Caps to a 1-0 lead they would not surrender. Semin and Green also scored in the first period to open up a 3-1 lead.

The game also so saw Brent Johnson, who has been very good in the stead of should-have-been starter Jose Theodore, get absolutely pummeled by ‘Canes players while covering a puck and waiting in vain for a whistle to come. He left the game having given up a goal on 14 shots. Theodore performed admirably in his relief, stopping 13 shots over the last 40 minutes of the game.

Semin scored his second goal of the game in the second and Backstrom added his insult-to-injury strike in the third. When the game was over, Ovechkin and Green both had a goal and two assists, Backstrom had one of each, and Semin had two goals and three assists. Semin now leads the league in points (27) and goals (13). Those numbers will only increase now that Ovie, who has a ho-hum 13 points in 13 games but is 2-5-7 in his last four, has apparently found his touch again.

What this all adds up to, of course, is bad news for the ‘Canes, who at least made the Southeast interesting for the first month and a half or so of the season. With what’s seems like an unstoppable offensive troika of Ovechkin, Semin and whichever center gets dropped between them, plus Green providing offensive pop from the point, the Caps might now have the arsenal to win even the bloodiest of gunfights should their goaltending not hold up. Not that they’ll need that much help against teams like Atlanta (-.74 goal differential per game), Tampa (-.67), Florida (-.47) and Carolina (-.31), because Washington, despite the so-so offense from everyone BUT Semin is +.4. What will that climb to with Ovechkin actually playing well? It’s hard to peg down a number, obviously, but you know it could — and probably will — get ugly in a hurry.

So yeah, the race for the Southeast crown appears all but over save for a cataclysmic injury to one or two of Washington’s big guns. The Caps already lead the division by two points with a game in hand and have yet to lose in regulation at the Verizon Center. Unlike those punks at the network news outlets, I’m calling the race well before it’s official: the Washington Capitals are your 2008-09 Southeast Division Champions.

The days of Ovechkin going 0-0-0 or 0-1-1 for two weeks straight already seem like distant memory, and that’s not a good thing for anyone but his team. They could be putting up NBA Jam Tournament Edition scores on the Southeast by January.

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The Lead

The Penguins/Capitals matchups are typically a pretty big deal.

The game’s two best players, Sid Crosby and Alex Ovechkin, head to head. The NHL should be all over games like this. It should be drop-everything material for Versus.

But this game wasn’t. It was on something like Center Ice 8. To be fair, though, this game deserved that little.

Sure, Washington roared back from a 3-0 deficit to win 4-3 and it was a pretty exciting game, but the Sid/Ovie storyline didn’t exactly pan out.

Sid was, well, he was okay. I mean, okay for Crosby. Picked up two assists and you can’t take that away from him, but he didn’t really blow your mind with anything, and one of his assists was a faceoff win. Again, perfectly alright game, but he didn’t seem especially fired up for it.

Neither did Ovechkin, or at least I think he didn’t. It was kind of hard to tell because I barely noticed him all night. He often seemed more concerned with getting in Geno Malkin’s face than doing what he typically does, which is score goals by the boatload and pick up assists on tap-ins he feeds to Washington’s numerous no-namers. He was absolutely invisible for most of the night.

His team picked up the win and I’m sure that’s all that really matters, but the last two games it’s been like Ovie hasn’t shown up at all. I watch Caps games when they don’t conflict with slightly better Western Conference matchups and as a result I’ve caught the last two. Barely an Ovechkin sighting in either of them. He has two goals and no assists so far this season, and both his goals came in one game. I’ve seen games where Ovechkin has struggled (rare though they may be), but he just doesn’t seem like himself. There’s none of that real enthuasiasm for the game he’s so typically displayed. Just two goals on 20 shots? Christ, Todd Bertuzzi’s doing better than that. Believe me, I love Ovie, but it could just be he’s fat and happy with that new contract or something, I dunno, but I’ll put it this way, any time Eric Fehr matches Alex Ovechkin’s season point total in one night, something is seriously wrong.

In fact, here is an unabridged list of players who had more goals than Alex Ovechkin BEFORE tonight: Tom Vanek, Marc Savard, Keith Tkachuk, Tomas Holmstrom, Todd Bertuzzi, Jonathan Cheechoo, Fabian Brunnstrom, Alexander Semin, Brandon Dubinsky, Brad Boyes, Aaron Voros, David Booth, Dany Heatley, Antti Miettinen, Simon Gagne, Mike Green, Bryan Little. That’s a lot of guys, 17 to be exact.

Fortunately for the Caps another Alex was there to pick up the slack, as one of the Semin variety scored Washington’s second goal (a quick-release wrister off a draw you could barely see on an HD feed), and set up Michael Nylander’s game-tying goal less than seven minutes later.

(As an aside, two of the three goals Jose Theodore gave up were softer than baby turds. I had nowhere else to put this thought and figured I’d just cram it somewhere random.)

Boyd Gordon played the part of Alex Ovechkin on the game-winner, rifling a shot past Marc-Andre Fleury and clinching the Caps’ third straight victory. But the goal scorers in this game weren’t exactly the big names people paid what I’m sure were high scalpers fees. Malkin had a goal, to be fair, but the other goalscorers were Alex Goligoski, Miro Satan, Tomi Fleischmann, Semin, Nylander and Boyd. Not exactly household names, and I’m sure the chuckleheads in Bristol, Conn. were rewinding the goal highlights going, “WHERE’S CROSBY I DON’T UNDERSTAND” over and over again.

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This video, taken from the Russian equivalent of MTV, was presumably filmed before Ovie met his internet girlfriend. However, this is possibly the best Ovechkin video ever and needs to be shown regardless.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsPC-JNIPzI]

I mean, you don’t even have to say anything after that.

By the way, the next great Ovechkin quote to enter the hockey lexicon should definitely be:

“They say hello, I say hey, the next thing you know they say rape.”