Photo by Ghost Bear.

In a contest of teams built from the ground up by the two best general managers in Washington Capitals history, the Caps beat the Nashville Predators 3-2 last night at the Verizon Center. The two men — former GM David Poile and current GM George McPhee — have worked together in the past, when Poile made the best offer for his disgruntled former employee, Brendan Witt. Right now, the Capitals enjoy a 4-0 winning streak over their former boss’ squad, the last three of those wins coming in overtime.

Last night’s win featured two goals and a successful shootout attempt from Alex Ovechkin. Capital Outsider pointed out astutely that this does not make a hat trick. We’re not saying that he couldn’t pull a rabbit out of his hat. We’re just saying that he didn’t score three goals, because the last one, being part of the shootout, doesn’t count as a goal for hockey purposes. One could say that he pulled out half of a hat-trick, but that would be splitting hairs.

Equally hair-splitting are some interesting variations in play brought about by the NHL’s new rules. Starting this year, for instance, every face-off has to take place at one of nine face-off spots painted on the ice. It used to be that most face-offs happened wherever the preceding play stopped. Now they are automatically moved to central points in whatever zone the play ended. If the puck happens to leave play by accident from the very outside edge of your team’s offensive zone, just inside the blue line, now you get a faceoff right down by the goal.

Of course, you’re not allowed to shoot the puck out of the rink on purpose, so you will end up with players acting like they’re just trying to casually flip it across to the opposite boards, and they’re surprised it went over. This moves them from just inside the blue line, fifty or sixty feet away from the goal (or more, when one is out at the boards), to the offensive zone faceoff spot, about twenty feet from the goal. If you can convince the ref you didn’t mean to knock the puck out of play, and if you’ve got someone who can probably win the faceoff, it’s like gaining ten to twenty free yards, and getting a free line change.