FanHouse AlexOvechkin

Every Monday during the season, two of our hockey writers will debate one topic. It's the 2-on-1. This week, Chris Botta and Kevin Schultz discuss the top stories of the young NHL season.

After the first two games of the Washington Capitals' season, Alex Ovechkin is on pace to score approximately 123 goals (hurray for small sample sizes!).

BOSTON -- On the first day in October, more than eight months before the Stanley Cup is rolled out to center ice, the Washington Capitals demonstrated in NHL Game No. 1 in Boston on Thursday night why they may be the Eastern standard.

These Capitals are not just Alexander Ovechkin, but a team constructed with precision from top to bottom.

BOSTON -- The Washington Capitals do not have all the answers for getting around Norris Trophy-winning defenseman Zdeno Chara, so maybe they're trying to kill the 6-9 defenseman with compliments.

"Best defenseman in the league," said head coach Bruce Boudreau after Thursday morning's skate at TD Garden.

"Big, strong, longest stick in the NHL -- one of the best d-men in the game," said tonight's nemesis, Hart Trophy winner Alexander Ovechkin.

"Probably the toughest player to go against in the league," said Ovechkin disher Nicklas Backstrom.

After asking where the bitterness was in the Penguins-Hurricanes series, it took us all of one game to potentially find some. Late in the third period of Pittsburgh's 3-2 win on Monday night, Penguins forward Matt Cooke and Hurricanes forward Erik Cole were involved in a knee-on-knee collision that resulted in Cole leaving the game and not returning. The Hurricanes, as one would expect, weren't all that happy with the play.

On Wednesday, the NHL announced there will be no punishment for Cooke in the form of a suspension, while Dave Molinari of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette reports there is no word yet on whether or not he will be issued a fine.

After jumping out to a 1-0 series lead in the Western Conference Final, Red Wings head coach Mike Babcock held a press conference on Monday and fielded a variety of questions from the media. For the most part, it was your typical, run-of-the-mill press conference.

About half way through, a reporter started asking Babcock about how he once joked that he was ready for the salary cap to break up the young talent the Chicago Blackhawks have assembled over the years. In Babcock's mind, he wasn't joking.

The Red Wings and Blackhawks opened their Western Conference Final on Sunday with a 5-2 Detroit win to take an early 1-0 lead in the series. The best news for hockey fans, however, might be the report that some people across the country actually saw it happen.

According to Sports Business Daily, via Steve Lepore at Puck The Media, Sunday's game drew a 2.0/5 overnight rating, which is the highest mark the NHL has received on NBC (excluding Stanley Cup Finals games and Winter Classic games) since the network started airing games following the lockout.

There was a time when my favorite sport was, without hesitation, baseball. Recently, however, my interest in the game has been lost. Not because of a steroid scandal or the incompetence of Bud Selig, but mostly because the team I grew up cheering for, the Pittsburgh Pirates, has been a Major League Baseball team in name only and is currently working on its 17th consecutive losing season with no end in sight.

You might argue that makes me a fair-weather fan, but I disagree. My interest is so low that if, by some perfect storm -- like the rest of the National League halting operations and disbanding from the league -- the Pirates actually won something, I still probably wouldn't care as much as I should. I just don't care about baseball anymore, but I certainly don't begrudge those who still do. It's still a great game, even if my interest is at an all-time low.

Penguins goalie Marc-Andre Fleury didn't have the best playoff series of his career against the Washington Capitals, but he managed to save his best moment for the biggest stage, robbing Capitals superstar Alex Ovechkin in the opening minutes of Pittsburgh's commanding 6-2 on Wednesday night.

Ovechkin worked his way behind the Pittsburgh defense and stormed in by himself, like he's done so many times in his career, and had an opportunity to blow the roof off the building with the all-important first goal.

Video after the jump.

WASHINGTON -- Just a couple of minutes into the second period of Wednesday night's big hockey game at the raucous arena here nicknamed The Phone Booth, let's just say the line went dead. All of a sudden, you could barely hear a thing, except for that scraping sound that metal blades make sliding across the ice.

At this particular point, they were the skates laced to the feet -- the clay feet, as it turns out -- of Simeon Varlamov, the young goalie for the hometown Capitals. He was skating to the swinging door of his team's bench, head down, and would not come back. A fourth puck had just screamed past him and into the back of the net

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