MONTREAL - It might seem like a crazy overstatement to say a team with the possibility of tieing a series with a victory in Game 4 is done like a smoked meat sandwich at 3 a.m. (extra fat, please), but the rye bread and the Washington Capitals look like they’re squeezing the Montreal Canadiens.
Pass the napkins, please.
Stranger things have happened, but after chasing Montreal goaltender Jaroslav Halak from the net with three goals on four shots in the second period of their 5-1 win Monday night, the Caps look like a team suddenly sure of itself.
There is the unmistakable vibe of the Canadiens being on the run now and the Caps firmly in control of this Eastern Conference quarterfinal. They’re up just 2-1, but are looking like the opening night skittishness that marked their overtime loss to the Habs is now nothing but an old memory.
And the Caps haven’t even scored a power-play goal yet in this series (0-for-14 so far).
That’s the way Capitals defenceman Mike Green sees it, even if his coach did not.
“That’s the type of efforts we need to win. When everyone plays like that - they don’t have much out there. Really, they don’t,” he said of the Habs to a Washington reporter.
“There’s no reason for us to have swagger. We’ve won two games and you’ve got to win four. Then you’ve got to win 12 more after that so there’s a lot of room for concern,” said Bruce Boudreau, who, when he’s not throwing water on playoff momentum theories, coaches the Capitals.
Goaltending was going to be a big question mark in this series, but like this?
There have now been more goaltenders (four) than there have been games (three).
The Canadiens’ hope in this series, which actually became a reality in the first game, was they could get some above-average goaltending, keep the games tight, and pull it out at the end.
When Halak was pulled in favour of Carey Price at 8:33 of the second period, Halak, described by Caps captain Alex Ovechkin as shaky in Game 2, had given up eight goals on the last 30 shots he had faced.
“I don’t know about this game. I didn’t see a replay if he was shaking or not. But, you know, we score three goals and they have to make some changes, the same as we did in the second game. It worked for us but for them it didn’t.”
Young Semyon Varlamov, meanwhile, who had replaced Jose Theodore in the Caps net early in Game 2, played strongly Monday night.
Though they got a goal from superstar Alex Ovechkin (to make it 4-1), it was the spear carriers like former first-round pick Boyd Gordon, scratched for Game 2, who got the game changer Monday night when he scored short-handed to open the scoring just 66 seconds into the second period.
“It got us the 1-0 lead and I think from there on we kind of took it to them for the most part,” said Gordon.
“The team that scores first gets the momentum, but we have to stop that from rolling,” said Canadiens forward Brian Gionta. “We just stopped doing what you need to do in the second period.”
The Caps also got goals by Brooks Laich, Eric Fehr and Matt Bradley.
“All week coming in, everybody wanted to talk about Ovechkin. Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s a premier player in this world. You can shut down Ovechkin and still give up five goals to these guys. It’s just going to happen that way and you saw that tonight,” said Canadiens winger Mike Cammalleri.
“We lost our composure in the second period,” said Canadiens defenceman Josh Gorges. “We made a couple of mistakes and we when we got behind, got frustrated, took some bad penalties and started running around. Too much of wanting to do too much yourself. We’ve got to learn from that. Stick to what works. We’ve proved when we play our game, we can play with these guys.”
The Caps now seem to have their goaltending situation straightened out, for one game, anyway.
Once again, the question of who will start in net will be a talking point going into a game, this time for the Habs.
