Bruce Boudreau has his misgivings about pairing Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, and Alexander Semin together. He recognizes their other worldly skill set, and how destructive it can be when it’s in synch, but he also believes that that massive sum of skill is the line’s undoing at times — that it leads the unit to get “too cute” and undermine its game-breaking threat. Well, after the Saturday night pre-Halloween massacre in Alberta, Gabby may just have to keep it together a while. Ten points between that trio last night.

• The Caps scored five of their six second-period goals in just 10 minutes and 12 seconds of skating time, and they put six markers past a world-class talent in Miikka Kiprusoff with just 21 shots.

• Success out West, even in the Ovechkin era, has been terribly difficult for the Caps to achieve, and the opening 10 minutes of Saturday night offered the sort of script we’ve become accustomed to seeing from these games. The Caps looked tentative, jittery, deprived of poise. A bad bounce or two went against them. They got beaten badly on draws, with eerie regularity, and wide swaths of ice were open for Flames’ forwards to skate through and get deadly looks at Michal Neuvirth.  The hosts got a leg up early, rousing a raucous crowd. It really looked grim for the guests. “It was a rocky beginning but a great end,” Boudreau noted afterward. The season-long disappointing power play (4 for 38 entering play Saturday night) at last delivered, Nick Backstrom gorgeously converting a sublime Mike Green cross-ice feed, and in halving a 2-0 deficit before the intermission the Caps gave themselves a competitive pulse.

• It was a bit of a breakout game for Mike Green, who scored his first goal on the campaign and added 2 assists. Early on he played that fancy-pants style that infuriates coaches and fans alike, dropping no-look passes in the neutral zone and firing presumptive passes to unmanned point positions. Then he simplified his game and beautifully blended wise decisionmaking with his elite skill set. “Anytime we’re working hard, we’re getting opportunities to score. When we’re sitting back and making those lazy plays, that’s when we get in trouble and we have no chemistry,” Green said. “Tonight everybody was working hard, and that’s why we had the momentum to go and win.”

• Last night was my first real good look at Flames’ center Curtis Glencross, about whom many nice things have seen said in the new season (Grapes sang his praises during ‘Coach’s Corner’ last night). He’s ruggedly built, and he appears to have some offensive upside — he went for 15 and 18 a year ago in 67 games for the Flames. With a wee bit more speed he’d remind you of Brooks Laich, perhaps. But the tripping penalty he took on Mike Green early in the second period last night, with his team already down a man, was devastating. It allowed Ovechkin to steal all of the Halloween candy from all of the Calgary children in attendance.

• It’s easy to lose sight of a winning goalie’s effort in a blowout, but Michal Neuvirth made more surreal stops last night, and one or two of them came with the game not yet determined. Indeed, he authored a split-pad stuffing along the pipes in the first period with his club already down 2-0. That may have saved the night.

• That Alexander Semin curl-and-skate-blade-slide around Jarome Iginla in the third period was so so . . . Semin, so so slick.

• Eric Fehr was a healthy scratch Saturday night, and I rank among those who expected much bigger things from him in 2010-11. It’s not so much that his production is wildly off (2 and 2 in 10 games), it’s his play away from the puck I think that has been noticeably disappointing. The Caps need more jam in front of the opposing net, and Fehr has jam in his game.

• I really liked what Comcast’s Craig Laughlin offered as parting reflection in the broadcast: “This must be a carry-over game,” he opined. Yes the Caps don’t play again until Wednesday, but Laughlin’s right, they must find a way to make Saturday night more than a singular statement affair, and stake out a set of inspired efforts back home against a tough slate next week. The Leafs are improved, Boston has humiliated the Caps twice already, and the season’s biggest game to date arrives Sunday, with a visit from the Flyers.

And, how’s that Caps’ defense look right about now?

For a team that was rather thoroughly maligned for its defensive play upon arriving in Montreal on Sunday, the Capitals in game 3 gave a doozie of a debunking of that slur. Did you notice how seldom Habs’ forwards were able to get off shots off of the rush and instead often peeled back looking for trailer help? That’s prima facie evidence of exceptional defender positioning but also deft stick defending of additional attack space.

A great road team all season long, the Capitals on Monday night may have saved their best effort to date in ’09-10 on enemy ice. Knowing that 22,000-plus would welcome them in “Ole, ole, ole” fashion, but not necessarily with a booing of our national anthem, the Capitals as a team limited quality chances against youngster Semyon Varlamov in those vital first five to seven minutes of the opening frame. Then they executed the remainder of the period with textbook road hockey: by chipping pucks short and crisply off near boards and out of harm’s way, preventing Montreal from establishing its dazzling cycle game down low.

• By chipping pucks out of harm’s way as successfully as they did Monday night, the Caps were able to establish speed on the puck in the neutral zone, in counter-attacks, and when they have that, they’re lethal.

• Montreal played superb road hockey in games 1 and 2, and nearly left D.C. with two victories. Washington, unlike Montreal, has difference-makers throughout its lineup, and their heroics in game 2 got the series squared. Their compliments — the Capitals’ third- and fourth-liners — blew open game 3. Boyd Gordon got things started by persevering in tight on Halak and getting the Caps on the board short-handed. Matt Bradley’s final-minute tally Monday added, for this blogger at least, welcomed added rudeness by the guests for having been treated so shockingly inhospitably.

• Speaking of great grinding, Jason Chimera authored a perfect pest’s effort in game 3. Like Mike Knuble and Brooks Laich, he’s driving hard to the net, and using his size there to great effect. He’s also employing that get-under-your-skin ethos in tight (Knuble is magnificently as well) that drives the opposing defense and its goaltender bonkers, and like last night, draws penalties. Chimera right now is looking like the savviest of trade deadline acquisitions by George McPhee.

• Monday night’s second period reminded me of the third period in Chicago on St. Patrick’s weekend, when the Caps imposed their will on the Hawks, silencing cold a throaty throng and swiftly reversing a game’s momentum. It’s a thing to behold, when this Capitals’ team gets it MoJo going and goes tsunami, line after line, on quality clubs on their home ice. No other NHL club can do it with the lethal and spirit-sapping swagger that the Caps can.

• No game this season could have prepared Semyon Varlamov for what he would face in Monday night’s opening 20 minutes, and yet he authored what was easily, given the stakes and circumstances, his most impressive outing of his young career.

• Mike Vogel noted during the game that the Caps’ 4-0 lead represented the largest enjoyed by any team thus far in the 2010 postseason.

• Eric Fehr has spent a fair portion of the past seven years listening to critics question his selection in the first round of the 2003 NHL Entry Draft. He had a goal and assist Monday night hard on the heels of a pivotal tally against Jaroslav Halak when the Caps were down 2-0 in game 2 on Saturday. He sure seems to like playing the Habs, and Washington’s hockey fans ought to freshly celebrate Fehr’s perseverance in overcoming a remarkable litany of serious injuries to emerge as a productive power forward, one who is likely to improve even more in the years ahead.

• You know, most every memorable postseason run has a defining moment relatively early on, and John Carlson’s series-saver in game 2 may prove to be that for these Capitals. Where would they be this week absent his precocious last-minute heroics (again)?

• The much lauded Bell Centre crowd chose to boo the American anthem. Comcast Sportsnet’s Lisa Hillary, on the air live in the postgame: “I was embarrassed to be a Canadian.”

• What’s so jarring about this attack on our anthem — and Monday was hardly an exceptional outburst; the attacks date back some years now, and they’re most venomous in this Canadian city — is that 98.9 percent of Canadians are warm and genial and American-loving neighbors. Something profoundly sinister occurs up in Canada with a distinct and vocal minority seemingly in the isolation of the contemporary hockey rink. You want to approach these attackers, place your arms on their shoulders, look them square in the eye, and ask, ‘Is it really the case that you detest my nation and me, neighbor? No nation more aided my citizens on September 11, 2001. Would you do it again?’ The guess here is that the silence from Canadian media on this matter will be defeaning on Tuesday. The warriors on the ice in the NHL’s postseason surrender their hate at series’ end and honorably line up at center ice to shake hands. Some level of leadership up North is badly needed to suggest that hockey fans in Montreal follow this example.

• The Capitals killed four of five Montreal extra-man advantages Monday, but the first three Habs’ power plays — all killed by the Caps — were terrifically important, as the game then was very much still in doubt.

• The power play remains in a power outage — it’s in serious blackout, at 0-for-14 on the series — and a lot of that has to do with Alexander Semin’s struggles thus far. The LA Kings lead among the 16 clubs in the postseason operating at an amazing 58 percent efficiency. Two other clubs have like the Caps taken the collar a man up, Nashville and Buffalo. Right now, though, winning is what it’s all about.

Can’t watch that too often, can we? The only way to improve on that Marlboro Man moment would have been if Jagr were still dating a model and Ovi left the rink with her yesterday. Maybe he did.

What a morning to be discussing a monumental triumph by an American hockey team at the Olympics — today of course is the 30th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice. Speaking of the Miracle, it was bizarre to see NBC (Nothing But Curling) run a 30-minute, spectacularly well produced feature on it, hosted by Al Michaels, less than two hours before Team USA faced off against Canada in the most highly anticipated international hockey game in years, only to jettison the broadcast of the game to its hinterland cable partner, MSNBC. Just bizarre.

It was also bizarre to see NBC News treat last night’s game as a mega-event a mere 30 minutes before puck-drop. The game and its fevered anticipation led the very top of the 7:00 NBC Evening News. And on the home page for NBC’s Olympics coverage yesterday afternoon, this headline: “It’s hockey night in Vancouver.” Just bizarre.

If NBC is doing anything right with its hockey coverage of these Games it’s their generously including the analyses and reminiscences of various members of the Miracle on Ice team. Last night Mike Eruzione said of this American Olympics entry: “They’re not a team built on superstars, they’re built on character.” Rizzo knows of what he speaks.

A not so superfluous fashion note: the Americans last night honored our 1960 gold medal winning Olympic team by wearing replicas of their Squaw Valley sweater. Were they gorgeous or what? The last American Olympic hockey team that looked that good was our 1980 squad. This sweater should never ever be replaced so long as the United States fields a hockey team in the Olympics — or in any other international competition, for that matter. Other nations have sent their national teams out in a durable look over decades of competition, and what the Yanks wore last night seemed as natural and classic and durable as Yankee pinstripes.

There’s a powerful moment in ‘Forgotten Miracle’ when American head coach Jack Riley, speaking of his team’s startling upset of Canada at Squaw Valley, says of his goaltender, Jack McCartan, “No goalie ever played as well as McCartan played that night.” Jack Riley no doubt was watching last night’s game, and if he wasn’t ready to acknowledge Ryan Miller’s playing the best game an American goalie ever has in the Olympics — 42 saves of 45 Canadian shots, many of them of the high, high quality variety — we bet he might put Miller’s effort at a 1B to McCartan’s 1A.

Canada of course badly outshot the U.S., 45 to 23, and thoroughly controlled the first two periods of play. But the Americans for once had the better netminder, and they managed to out-physical the big Canadians. The Americans utilized their strong team speed to create an effective forecheck, which caused numerous turnovers by Canadian rearguards, particularly in the first period. American forecheckers had Canada rattled enough in their own end that Martin Brodeur may have developed distrust in his defenders; how else to explain his outlandishly poor judgment in attempting to fungo bat a puck out of his own end and onto the blade of Brian Rafalski, who subsequently put it in the back of the Canadian cage.

Has there been a better player in this tournament thus far than Rafalski?

The Americans played a disciplined game — they were whistled for a lone infraction through the game’s first 40 minutes. As much puck possession as Canada enjoyed, imagine if they’d had more ice and shooting lanes to work with in those first two periods. Excessive penalty killing necessarily carries a wearying effect, and in Sunday night’s final frantic minutes, when the Canadians sustained pressure in the offensive zone as if the Americans were defending without sticks, the Americans had lively legs, effectively getting into many shooting lanes and battling beautifully for loose pucks.

Did we say battling beautifully for loose pucks? Ryan Kesler’s empty net effort was iconic. A tally for American hockey lore. Like John Carlson’s last month.

The selection of Chris Drury for this American Olympic team occasioned no small volume of second guessing/criticism, but all of that has quickly silenced with his play through the first three games for the Americans. Already we are hearing commentators and analysts heap praise on Brian Burke and his American general manager brain-trust for assembling not the most talented group of Americans but “the right group.” A character group. When did you last hear that said of an American hockey entry at an Olympics? And how did they turn out? Just sayin. Incidentally, we’ve seen nowhere near the best from impact players Zach Parise, Patrick Kane, and Phil Kessel.

Speaking of Brian Burke, his agony this month — he lost his 21-year-old son Brendan in a car accident in snowy Indiana on February 5 — is unimaginable; may he and his family have found a few hours of respite in last night’s celebratory postgame.

Another sage observation from ‘Forgotten Miracle’: “A hot goalie at the right time can make the difference between a mediocre team and an Olympic gold medal victory team.”

Hey, so who won the ice dancing competition anyway?

“The theme was recorded with large horn and rhythm sections at Ocean Way studios on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood last Monday. The NHL was kind enough to lend the actual Stanley Cup for the session. Talk about inspiration!”

Peart was also accorded a brand new, very hockey-friendly drum kit for the recording session:

Seat Ovi behind this kit and he'd be a 'dirty drummer'

Update: Here’s a YouTube clip of the session which includes Peart acknowledging his own pond hockey career:

Update 2: Here’s Neal Peart on WCBS Radio in NYC

So he’ll give it the ‘ole college try. He’ll also be drinking better beer than we will.

• Much of the gear that travels is the same that was just worn in the game that night. Only the helmets, socks, and sweaters generally change. Everything is packed “sweaty,” meaning that the training staff must take it straight from Toronto Pearson Airport to the Air Canada Centre at a godforsaken Saturday morning hour to get it hung to dry in time for Saturday’s on-ice action. What does this mean for sleep and rest for the training and equipment staff, relative to the rest of the traveling troupe? Serious sleep deprivation, that’s what. Remember, they must be first on the rink scene in the morning to attend to various player equipment needs, such as skate sharpening.
• But first the Caps have to get to the airport from Verizon Center. And before the Caps’ training staff can focus exclusively on their team’s travel needs they must assist the visiting team’s training staff and get its gear packed up for their own hurried trip to the airport. I remember how surprised I was the first time I saw this when the Caps afforded me locker room access a few years back – I thought it was strange to see Capitals’ staffers working with Penguins’ or Flyers’ gear. But it’s simply tight travel time pragmatics, and every host team’s staff so assists the visitors. 

Because of late-night travel restrictions out of Reagan National (there’s an 11:00 curfew), the Capitals fly out of Dulles. Not terribly convenient, that.  The Caps typically are able to get to Dulles by 11:00 after games. At least the roads at that hour are relatively congestion-free, but this past Friday they encountered a backup on 66 West (imagine that).

• NHL membership has its privileges: the Caps are afforded a private TSA screening and are able to get boarded and settled in time for an 11:30 departure.
• I wondered about player nutrition in such a hectic and contrained schedule. Recall that players generally don’t eat after about 2:30 on game days with a 7:00 start — a late lunch — so by post-game you have to figure they’re fairly famished. Turns out they dine on a very late dinner on the plane.   
• Now remember that by virtue of crossing borders as the Caps did Friday/Saturday night they must enter Toronto Pearson through Canadian Customs. You better believe that that adds to the trip travel time. I’ve gone through Pearson for pleasure hockey trips a half dozen times, and when I identify the purpose of my visit  usually a sizable gang of male Customs agents converge on me and regale me with all manner of puck talk. They live for that. Imagine their excitement at chatting up Ovi and the boys after hours on a weekend night. It’s a wonder the Caps can even can make it to Saturday’s game considering the puck interrogation they likely get.  

By the time they make their way by bus to the team hotel and check in, few are asleep before 2:30. Like you I thought the Caps looked supremely tired in Toronto Saturday night — and no wonder! Friday’s game with the Habs was an exceptionally hard one; and remember that they lost Tom Poti early on to injury and skated with a short bench the rest of the way.     

• But as tired as the players understandably were, it’s the equipment and training staff that really feels the stress and strain of such quick turn-around time. “When I make the trip I have to struggle to get the game notes done for the next day,” one Caps’ media relations staffer told me, “which is nothing compared to what [the training] guys do.”

Think about the sheer volume of gear two or three training staffers must secure and navigate from city to city. Twenty-plus stuffed gear bags, about twice as heavy when wet, easily pushing 50 pounds each; about 100 sticks; and a couple of cabinets full of medical/training paraphanalia. The whole thing is not unlike the breakdown, travel, and setup roadies of a name rock band undertake on tour, except there are far fewer hands involved in hockey’s traveling road show.

The CBC doesn’t allow embedding of their videos so go here, select Dec 20 and forward to the 5:10 mark.

A tap of the stick to OFB Reader NS2NOVA for the pointer.