A devoted worshiper at the Church of Old Time Hockey, and imbued with resounding cynicism, I couldn’t help but think: We in D.C. have become so saturated with soft, perimeter play by our hockey players — most especially in spring — that it shouldn’t be surprising that some observers here find Callahan’s impression of William Wallace . . . so alien. One interpretation of the perpetual scratching of Jeff Schultz is that the Capitals’ new head coach thinks like I do.

An alternative interpretation of Callahan’s gallantry could go something like this:  That motherf*cker is damned tough to play against, and for the past couple of seasons, the talent-challenged Rangers have well reflected their captain’s grit and determination, by decree of their head coach, and given more talented clubs a real run for their money (especially in spring). Ryan Callahan is one hell of a captain. He will be one hell of an American Olympian captain as well.

Today, that talent gap with the rest of the East for New York has been closed quite a bit, and for me it’s no coincidence that playing inspired, finish-your-checks hockey the Rangers reside at the very top of the conference. Soon, they’ll get their best defenseman in the lineup (Marc Staal), for the first time this season, making them even tougher to play against. The Rangers are built the way serious contenders are — from the net out, big and brawny, with an unmistakable net-clearing ethos in front of the net, and mobile and skilled on the blueline. Served the Bruins rather well last spring.

Perhaps before we criticize another team’s captain and his teammates for excessive sacrifice and courage we ought to see to it that ours is within driving distance of the Viking, Alberta, meter of toughness and tenacity.

The Washington Capitals of the past five years haven’t exactly been known for the selfless sacrifice of their bodies for the betterment of the team, for finishing their checks. In fact, especially in spring, they have fairly earned the reputation of being a team that’s easy to play against, one that comparative lunch pale squads want to draw in the postseason. To state the obvious: there is today no Capitals player quite like Ryan Callahan, and there hasn’t been for some years. Once upon a time, though, there was. The good news is that the former Capitals’ captain is now behind the team’s bench. There, he’s attempting to change a country club culture.

He needs time — cultures, of course, aren’t changed in a week or a month.

Almost certainly, he also needs more Patrick division bodies. More on that in a moment.

Speaking of instructional moments, HBO’s ’24/7′ this month is again affording more stark relief for Capitals fans insofar as how the rugged East comports itself. Watching the intermission exhortations of John Tortorella and Peter Laviolette is not far removed from listening to the warrior words of William Wallace. At their conclusion I find myself clutching my abdomen on my couch to make sure no Rangers or Flyers stick blades make their way through the TV screen at me, and necessarily I’m reminded of the contrast Dan Bylsma brought with our guy on last year’s series (“Hit Green.”).

George McPhee hired Dale Hunter because he believed him to be the best possible coach for the Capitals at the present moment, and part of that formulation perhaps included his conviction that Hunter could be the architect for revamping both the style and ethos of the club. My guess is that Coach Hunter is taking inventory of the roster he has and will report rugged shortcomings to the GM in short order.

The arrival of 2012 really brings a demarcation moment for the Washington Capitals. To posit any plausible playoff success next spring the Caps necessarily will have to get past the pesky and gutsy and supremely sacrificing Rags, the larger and skilled Flyers and Bruins. I’m not sure that as comprised the Capitals would be favored in any series. But 2012 also brings Washington’s return to the reconstituted Patrick division. The Capitals of the past five years have been assembled to compete quite well in the softer Southeast. In the next calendar year the hockey for the guys in  red necessarily gets rougher and tougher.

Looking ahead to 2012 and beyond, there is cause for concern. When you inventory the Capitals’ prospects holdings at Hockeysfuture, with an eye toward who among just the top 15 qualifies as a North American forward prospect tipping the scales at at least 6 ’0, 180 pounds (hardly power forward in stature), the calculation is stunning: zero. Then for fun take a look at the size of the prospect holdings for the Rags, Flyers, Pens, and Devils — and just in their top 10. The Rangers are awaiting on reinforcements like Chris Kreider (6 ’2, 200), J.T. Miller (6 ’1, 198), and defenseman Dylan McIlraith (6 ’4, 215, nicknamed the Undertaker). Philly, ravaged by injury this season, has already received notable contributions from young, big-bodied North Americans like Brayden Schenn and Sean Couturier. The Pens have Eric Tangradi (6 ’4, 232), Dustin Jeffrey (6 ’1, 205), Robert Bortuzzo (6 ’3, 196), and Brian Strait (6 ’0, 200) in the pipeline. From the development perspective, we’re coming to the Patrick rechristening party next season with jockeys.

I still suggest that in hindsight it was right to draft the likes of Brian Sutherby, Nolan Yonkman, and Joe Finley. Things didn’t work out with them; injuries eviscerated their respective development. But the Capitals obviously have gotten away from drafting size and guile and grit, and beginning in 2012, they need it badly. Funny: The ‘New-look’ NHL at the top of the East these days rather resembles the old, in stature. The Capitals hold two first-round picks and potentially Colorado’s second-rounder next June. Those picks need to resemble NFL linebackers or safeties in size, and here’s hoping Dale Hunter — uniquely qualified to assess the attributes of top junior talent — is at the draft table for their selection, and subsequently their development.

(Like those in Tampa January 12, and Philly a week later.)

And so I braved the extreme elements in pursuit of televised, big-game puck. Might not have been the wisest course of action, but I regard myself as a hearty winter soul.

In ordinary weather I’ve merely a three- or four-minute commute to my local Chili’s, but Wednesday evening was anything but ordinary. The roads were madness, chaos, quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my hometown in winter — even last year’s anomalously snow-buried one. Ill-informed or belligerent drivers of small, rear-wheel-drive cars had no chance. None. And because of stranded and abandoned buses I had to navigate a 4-mile, highly circuitous  route to the restaurant. I made it, finally, and was thrilled to be seated in warmth smack in front of a 50-inch flatscreen, all to myself, tall draft beer before me. I’d missed only the opening couple of minutes of the game. (Obviously, no scoring.) The evening at that moment felt quite special; I rather enjoyed the adventurous ardor by which to view the big game.

Then I watched it. Well, tried to.

The next time you read or hear a prominent hockey commentator — particularly one up in Canada, one who isn’t tasked with watching Washington Capitals’ games night in, night out — blather on about all being just dandy in D.C. these days, that the Caps are merely dress rehearsing for the big springtime production, shoot him a quick email that informs:

• The Washington Capitals have won a grand total of nine of their last 25 games. Does that strike you as the mid-season form of a champion-in-waiting?

• Also, if the game goes to OT, they’ve no chance.

I was appalled by what I watched Wednesday night. Again. In another “big game,” the Capitals came up incredibly small. There’s far more power outage among the Capitals’ forwards than any Montgomery County neighborhood serviced by Pepco. And it isn’t accidental. Not only didn’t the Caps score, again, really they didn’t even come close to. Again.

More and more this is a hockey season of unfathomable waste in Washington. So little worth preserving on the DVR. New Years Day is less a grand feat in the context of the whole season because we now realize that the game’s swamp conditions greatly aided the guests. The Caps’ most impressive games this season came way back in the fall, when the Caps were the Caps of old: exciting. Now they’re the Devils of the past 15 or 20 years. What I really need from Pepco this hockey season are outages from 7:00-10:00 on Capitals’ game nights.

I was filled with disgust at the game-ending horn Wednesday, and I immediately rang my buddy Michael in up Maine, who I knew was watching like I was. I didn’t even get a hello in to him before I heard these words from his mouth: “Uninspired and unwatchable.”

Utterly perfect synopsis.

The Washington Capitals this winter are unwatchable — particularly from the vantage of those laying out large coins to be seated down low in Verizon Center, having responded to the offseason marketing cry of, Washington’s most exciting sports brand — the only winning game in town!

At the end of my 20-minute telephone catharsis with Michael Wednesday I realized that my outrage wasn’t directed merely at another lousy result in a “big game” but what the Capitals’ surrender meant in a macro-philosophical sense. Remember the adage “The new NHL”? It represented an evolution away from the clutch-and-grab, drab trap and dump NHL hockey pre-lockout. The one that ESPN rightfully abandoned. In the new NHL hockey was to be played . . . with flow and creativity, with scoring consequently elevated. In other words, as it’s supposed to be played. In capitulating as the Capitals have this winter, in playing away from their roster strength, they’ve basically dropped the proud flag of up-tempo thrill that actually made Washington a hockey town.

Our last great hope perhaps is to have the Vancouver Canucks win Lord Stanley this season. The brand of hockey they displayed at Verizon Center a few weeks back was captivating — fast and synchronous, quality scoring chance after quality scoring chance generated, hard-hitting, hockey the way it’s supposed to be played. The Caps did everything they could in that game to uglify it. Naturally, they lost. Because they’re impostors.

George McPhee this week announced the resigning of Alexander Semin. A part of me wondered why he pursued such a skilled player to play in this slop of a system. But then I realized: McPhee and Bruce Boudreau genuinely want a 0-0 result in 5-on-5 play this season, especially in the postseason — that’s what these new-look Caps seem to be able to consistently generate, after all — and hope that Semin or Mike Green can tally on a power play, and then they’ll hold on.

How thrilling.

Two weeks ago, when I went up to Philly for that other big game, I joined Lisa Hillary for a between-periods radio segment with WTOP’s Jonathon Warner. Warner asked Lisa if she was surprised by what she’d seen from the Capitals on the evening. Lisa turned and looked blankly at me, a bit fearful I think of her instinct to be blunt and frank on the air in that moment. But she replied, “Jonathon, I don’t recognize the Capitals’ team I’m seeing tonight.”

You know, there remain 10 more contractual years of Alexander Ovechkin’s NHL career in Washington. What if you knew that all 10 were to be played in a system such as this season’s? Wouldn’t you hurl yourself in front of the next available snowplow?

It is uniquely the NHL that soils the intrinsic beauty of this great game. George McPhee this week acknowledged there being a lot of “copy-catting” by teams in the league. It’s a copy-catting of the lowest common denominator: take highly skilled hockey players and suffocate their instincts and skillsets within a soporific system that stymies. It’s socialized hockey. When have you associated socialism with creativity and inspiration? It’s the old ways versus the short-lived, tantalizingly exciting new. I understand the need of many European pro teams, in leagues in nations whose best players have come over to the NHL, to play neutral zone suffocation — there’s a dearth of talent there. But watch our Americans who’ve come up through the USNDTP, in any international tournament today, in any age bracket. The Red, White and Blue develop young guns of great gallop, and they attack in waves and pressure the puck in every inch of the ice. It’s so beautiful to watch. It’s hockey as hockey should be played. It’s also the hockey the NHL promised us it was returning to.

Label this surrender style the Caps are playing whatever you want, but most assuredly, if you are a lover of hockey as it should be played, you can’t call it inspired. Or watchable.

An individual NHL game in midseason is but a proverbial snapshot in time — a single frame in a long-running motion picture. Macro-meanings about it aren’t there for the divining. Generally. But some games are bigger than others, and last night’s at Verizon Center surely qualified as one. The revamped and improved Tampa Bay Lightning were in town, and with their 51 points entering play last night they were tied with the Caps for first in the Southeast. They will qualify for the postseason this year, and many in media last night noted that Tuesday night’s absence of scoring and generally ugly style of play was playoff prescient. If all this is true, we can take away one macro-meaning from last night.

These in-midseason-evolving Capitals aren’t where they need to be for spring.

The team’s forwards especially don’t yet look comfortable in Bruce Boudreau’s revamped attack. Your best players have to be your best players on the journey to prosperity, and it’s an extended narrative of intrigue and concern now: Alexander Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstron, Alex Semin — none look themselves these days, and haven’t for quite a while. It’s early still in the evolution, this new approach of Gabby’s, but it just doesn’t seem to be labor much in the nature of the big dogs.

They need to be out running together, in a great gallop, no?

Saturday’s skate in outdoor squalor was tailor made for this new approach, but the rest of the way the Caps are going to have to get it done absent any aid from the skies. And while the results of late have been encouraging overall, Tuesday night offered perhaps the best preview to date of what it takes to enjoy success in the postseason. Tampa with its new goalie and commitment to eliminating time and space for the Capitals’ skilled forwards, and perhaps most importantly, with just one line of impact skill and a whole lot of muck around it, looked poised and battle-ready and comfortable in its own skin. It was the Capitals who looked out of synch and very out of character. They looked like greyhounds at an Iditarod instead of a Florida racetrack. And Tampa with its one-line attack will not pose the greatest threat to Capitals’ postseason prosperity.

That Iditarod comparison may be particularly apt, too; it’s a long, tough slog through mighty adverse conditions in the NHL postseason. You need game-changing skill and thick-coated uglies (wolves, virtually) for the NHL in spring.

There wasn’t much of a hound’s bark from the Caps on the attack last night. And there hasn’t been in this evolution. Thirty four shots on Dwayne Roloson last night (21 in the second stanza alone), but few of them were exceptionally threatening. In its former flow game the Caps were difficult to defend because with speed and lethal skill they attacked in waves, horizontally and vertically. Still they try to find a pinching Mike Green or a sleuthing Alex Semin in small space, but hardly ever off the rush — for there is no rush any more — and consequently there’s a forest of opposition sticks allowed to set up and defend, deflecting most cross-ice passes out of harm’s way.

There are positives here to tout: the team has allowed just 14 goals in its last nine games, and Semyon Varlamov is looking mighty no. 1 in net now. The penalty kill is a top-five performing unit. Additionally, by adopting a trapping style of play the Caps are decreasing both the pressure placed on its solid if unspectacular blueline during 5-on-5 play and the volume of quality shots their netminders nightly face.

But you still have to score goals, and the Caps aren’t scoring them.

“We’re not scoring goals right now. Thank god we’re getting good goaltending and playing defense,” Bruce Boudreau noted in the postgame last night.

On some level there is the air of capitulation with what the Capitals are doing in the middle of this hockey season. The promise of what George McPhee has spent much of the past decade drafting and refining, and what Gabby has grafted together with it, was fundamentally antibiotic to the NHL’s malady: boring hockey (ask ESPN) — or at least stylistic servings not likely to lure in newcomers to our game’s rinks and before the TV. To put it succinctly: you don’t amass a Red Army with trap hockey. Ask the New Jersey Devils.

And, to no small degree, the Capitals’ participation in this year’s Winter Classic — after NBC snubbed them in favor of the Flyers with last year’s game — was premised on Washington delivering a markedly different aesthetic than what the Bruins and Flyers did in Fenway Park (a three-hour sleeping pill). Weather played a role, and the night-time start Saturday was a saving grace, but these evolving Caps weren’t ready to carry that out in Winter Classic ’11.

There is a sense of surrender settling in here, and at least on this laptop, it’s disquieting. Hockey shouldn’t be about surrender, about joining the pack. Winning hockey that broadens the sport’s appeal should be about breaking away from the pack.

Maybe this evolution is borne of desperation, too. If Gabby wasn’t on the brink of firing 15 days ago, he was close to it. Desperation often times breeds desperation tactics. This capitulation, this surrender, looks inorganic, unauthentic, forced and ill-fitting. Even if growing pains with it are the culprit for its offensive shortcomings to a degree, it’s time-tested nature is ugly. What do we think of that?

Yes the Devils won Cups with it, but not with greyhounds masquerading as huskies.

Perhaps this uglification is merely a Band-Aid to better times, or perhaps it’s actually a partially installed hybrid, one that will eventually be refined so as to better showcase this roster’s speed and skill. But what if it isn’t? What if this Capitals club is now led by a coach whose bread-and-butter approach has been proven beatable by all in the big leagues, and in its place he’s deploying a system he hates? If the coach hates it, what is the likelihood of his skilled players embracing it?

Maybe at the end of the day this really is an existential question: would you take winning ugly, winning the New Jersey way, and emptying your rink by half along the way, or be bold and re-unleash your top dog and the greyhounds around him, unsure of when you’ll cross the finish line?

Hopefully HBO’s cameras tonight will document what exactly Bruce Boudreau said to his team during the first intermission Sunday night, but both the fanbase and much of the media that covers this team was at that moment consumed with a lot of dark thoughts. Tuesday night’s relatively easy looking 5-1 victory over the hapless Devils wasn’t assured or easy through 30 minutes, but the patience and resolve the Capitals exhibited was made possible by Sunday night’s stunning turnaround. Truthfully: how many of you thought Here we go again when the Sens strutted out to a 2-0 lead?

Perreault’s heroics Sunday night were important most particularly in the context of this: no one else at that moment was going to step up and do that. Your first-liners? If you watched last night’s game, you saw how beleaguered they remain. The weight of Ralph Friedgen was lifted off this hockey team when Matty struck on Sunday night’s first shift of a do-or-die second period, then followed with the game-winner some six minutes later. The Caps came scintillatingly close to scoring four goals during that turnaround frame, in what was perhaps a season-salvaging stanza, and Matty was the catalyst.

* * * * *

Two wins in a row is nothing to crow about, especially over also-rans Ottawa and Jersey, but with the young season’s most important game up next — and with pretty much all of the hockey world poised to watch that — this scintilla of a turnaround is significant. The Caps will take on the league’s hottest team Thursday night feeling relatively good about themselves. You couldn’t have said that about 60 hours ago.

* * * * *

Now the results are arriving, but this hockey club remains far from full throttle. They’re scaring no one right now. Baby steps toward competency.

We don’t have anything approaching answers for why so sour a streak could have enveloped so strong a club for so long; we have educated guesses, but no answers. We also don’t yet know for sure that this club possesses the leadership required to prosper when it counts most. And so a regular season challenged in meaning four weeks ago now has delivered a crucible of a question near its midpoint, the answer to which ought to be rendered in the second half, and most especially next spring.

One elephant-in-the-room question looms over this franchise: what is wrong with the captain? He’s scored a grand total of 2 goals in his last 19 games. Most checking line forwards are superior producers. What gives?

Think back to his rookie season, when his surrounding personnel was so comparatively unimpressive, and how easily goal scoring came to him then. The greatest scorers in league history endure rough patches of drought, but what Ovi’s enduring in the back half of 2010 is as stunning as it is inexplicable.

* * * * *

Tuesday was a night to salute the reinforcements from Hershey. Andrew Gordon, off of a spectacular feed from Marcus Johansson, tallied his first-ever NHL marker. Jay Beagle notched his first NHL tally of the season. Perreault was kept off the scoresheet but was shifty and active and a catalyst again. “A lot of Bears on the board” is the way John Carlson (+4) described the evening. “I thought they all played great,” the head coach said of his Hershey imports. “They had lots of energy, they followed direction and they played with passion and enthusiasm. When you do that, usually, no matter what league you’re in you’re going to have success.”

Gordon is far and away the most sincere, the most pleasant, and the most thoughtful hockey player I’ve ever interviewed. That beaming smile you saw of his as the Versus cameras panned in on him is SOP for his labor at the rink. He treats every interrogatory like it’s a privilege. He is just a class kid. If you’re not rooting for Andrew Gordon to make it in the big league there’s a malignancy in your hockey heart.

* * * * *

In the place of conference superiority entitlement, the Caps late in 2010 look required to battle for division and conference supremacy during the season’s second half. Relative to the past couple of seasons, and most particularly in consideration of their postseason returns, doesn’t that strike you as potentially a good thing?

* * * * *

Some perspective on NHL wins and losses: We might enjoy a white Christmas in Washington this year. The last relatively significant snow event on that day here occurred in 1962. I’ve long associated blanketing snow with coveted tranquility and redemptive spirituality. That is until I read Mary Rogan’s profile of Brian Burke in the forthcoming January issue of GQ. Burke of course lost his 21-year-old son Brendan back in February, when his car careened into an oncoming track during a severe winter storm. The searing image of this profile is of Burke’s being haunted by thoughts of the final 10 seconds of his lost son’s life.

Rogan writes: “At his feet, on the weathered deck, are wet blotches from the tears [Burke] can’t slap away fast enough. “Brendan died alone in the snow,” he sobs. “And it haunts me that the last ten seconds of his life were filled with terror.”

Do yourself a favor and read this tour de force of journalism this holiday season, and if you’re a prayerful person join me in asking God to grace Brian Burke with the arrival of elusive peace and tranquility — most particularly when it snows.

Did I just mention “aesthetics” and New Jersey Devils in the same sentence? Shame on me.

Over the last 20 years no team in hockey has done more to insulate the NHL from popular (i.e., ESPN) appeal than the Devils with their somnambulistic style of play. And amid all that gaudy winning they’ve had the turnstile numbers to prove it. For all that winning they carry a novel distinction: club most responsible for TV viewer tune-out, and club least likely ever to skate in a Winter Classic.

Here are things I’ve rather opened my wallet for the past 15 years than a ticket to a Devils’ visit to D.C.: painful dentistry; property taxes; parking at FedEx Field (admittedly hypothetical); boxed wine.

It is with this backdrop that I’d have you glance — and dance — upon the present misfortune of the forked ‘N.’ With a record of 2-6-1 they sit perched in 15th place in the Eastern conference this morning. Out of 15 teams. On Saturday night, with but one win at home on the ledger and hosting the thus-far underwhelming Buffalo Sabres, Devils’ rookie bench boss John MacLean . . . benched his $100-million-plus man, Ilya Kovalchuk. Kovalchuk had been a healthy scratch previously in his career, he just couldn’t recall when. The Devils, you’ll recall from the summer, initially attempted to sign Kovalchuk until he was 80, for a gazillion dollars. Instead, they settled for a 15-year pact worth $102 million. At present, about $100 million of it looks ill spent.

And we in Washington thought Michael Nylander’s contract was an albatross.

I was one who wondered exactly what Devils’ management saw in Kovalchuk after his acquisition from Atlanta last spring to bother pursuing him at all. He put up a point per game in 27 games with Jersey last spring (10 goals, 17 assists), but he was far from the game-breaking acquisition some believed he would be. Moreover, Kovy was conspicuously impact-less in another first-round flameout by the Devils last spring (three straight seasons of that). And then there’s this: Kovy is a floater, a dynamic offensive forward who’s seldom seen his own end. Square peg for a round hole, anyone? Kovalchuk could be a difference-maker for a number of competitive clubs, but in New Jersey’s system?

Really, he’s the antithesis of a Lou Lamoriello forward — he’s dynamic and exciting in the offensive end. But with respect to that monster contract: what if his best hockey is behind him?

That healthy scratch of Kovalchuk Saturday night helped deliver a 6-1 setback for the hosts. Thus rests the team’s record at home early on in 2010-11: 1-4-1. Last night the Devils lost in MSG to the beat-up Rangers, 3-1. Wait til the Flyers and Pens feast on them. The new coach apparently is on the proverbial “hot seat.” There is the very real possibility that Jersey could finish last in the Atlantic; they look that bad, and their manager, owning to what ESPN’s Scott Burnside has termed “chronic salary cap mismangement,” is now powerless to do anything about it.

The Devils of course have had Martin Brodeur as their bedrock the past decade and a half. He turned 38 this year. Early this season, he looks it. He’s got the whiff of very elder statesman to him now. He hasn’t looked especially reliable in recent postseasons, so what’s to think he’s likely to improve at this stage of his career?

The Caps have their problems, to be sure, but they pale in comparison to the tale of woe managed to this moment by Devil Lou. For some seasons now, it’s seemed as if New Jersey was at last going to receive its comeuppance in the standings. But Brodeur held the fort. No longer. So cash-strapped are the Devils that they’ve been forced to compete with as few as 15 skaters in a game earlier this season. Imagine.

The money numbers aren’t pretty. Kovalchuk the one dimensional becomes an unrestricted free agent in . . .  drumroll . . . 2025. I love his cap hit beginning next year, in perpetuity: $6,666,666. Evil, indeed. Patrick Elias — beginning to look washed up himself (1 goal in nine games) — assaults the payroll for a cool $6 million. Dainius Zubrus — remember him? — devours $3.4 million through 2013. Ouch. Lou acquired Jason Arnott over the summer, too. He’s skating a tidy -8 (so is Elias). Brodeur’s $5.2 million comes off the books after 2012.

The Devils’ best skater has long been Zach Parise. He’s a restricted free agent next summer. Wonder if any teams will be interested in his services, knowing the balance sheet Lamoriello has to manage over the foreseeable future?

Confronting the increasingly pressing need to replace perhaps the greatest goalie in NHL history, Lamoriello went out and spent more than $100 million on an ill-fitting floater for his system this summer. That was a deadly dolt move on top of numerous other dud deals weighing down the roster. Now his squad is on a lottery-like pace.

Lovely.

• The Gr8 authored his eighth overtime game-winner. Ovechkin’s third shot of the game was the OT winner, a change-up that Pascal Leclaire would love to have back. Otherwise, Ovi only had one shot on goal through 50 minutes and was on the ice for the Sens tying goal in the third period.

• Marcus Johansson is not performing especially well in the early stages of his NHL career. He seemed generally nervous Monday night and for the second Caps’ win in a row, skated as a minus player. MoJo also lost seven of nine draws last night.

• While linemate Ovechkin has five points in the first three games this season, Nicklas Backstrom has got zilch on the 2010-11 docket. A poor defensive error at the blueline led directly to the Sens’ second goal.

• A penny for your thoughts on the play of Tyler Sloan and John Erskine last night. Specifically, do you wish they were paid in pennies? Quality defensive depth is not likely to be a hallmark of the 2010-11 Caps.

• Putrid: the Caps’ powerplay — it’s 1-for-12 on the young season. Last night it looked effortless. And we don’t mean effortlessly simple. It was pretty dismal, possibly worse than its performance against Montreal last postseason. The man-up units could barely pain entry into the offensive zone, never mind getting shots. They tried backdoor plays early on with Green and Carlson going for the tap-ins. It worked two years ago almost every time with Green, but not once last night.

• Perfection: the Caps’ penalty kill — it’s 13-for-13 on the young season.

• Both Caps’ regulation goals were backdoor garbage goals. Semin pulled a Sidney Crosby in the first period standing right outside the blue paint and Fehr was set up by a nice behind-the-net play by Hendricks and Gordo.

• Neuvy shouldn’t be faulted for either Sens’ goal. The first was a deflection off Jarko Ruutu’s stick which was never going to be saved. Ryan Shannon dangled around John Carlson to roof Ottawa’s tying goal blocker side on Neuvirth. The Czech stopper has had consecutive balanced games with no bad goals against.

Atlanta Thrashers’ goalie Ondrej Pavelec collapsed in the season opener due to a not uncommon fainting spell, but he subsequently suffered a concussion from the fall to the ice. Still, his prognosis is good.

Slovakia General Manager Peter Bondra took in his first game of the season in the Verizon Center press box last night, checking out Ottawa’s Slovakian fist line winger, Milan Michalek.

Devils’ Dilemma: New Jersey, under dire salary cap duress, dressed just 15 skaters — just nine forwards! — for its home date versus Pittsburgh last night, a 3-1 Pens’ win. Nice cap management. Mike Green skated almost 32 minutes on Monday night. Imagine if he were in a Devils’ sweater these days.