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Sergei Fedorov looks half excited, half scared for his life here. And who says D.C. isn't a hockey town?

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I'm sure I'm not the only one who's seen Alex Ovechkin shirtless in the dressing room – and there are plenty of pictures out there for the curious. Unlike some of hockey's all-time great snipers, he's not built with Popeye-thick forearms and a barrel chest.

And yet he sure shoots like it.

Ovechkin was the difference in Game 2 for the Capitals, but more to the point, Ovechkin's shot was the difference. He scored three terrific goals – two perfect one-timer blasts and one seeing-eye wrister up high – on shots that only a small fraction of the best players in the world have a hope of making.

It reminds me a bit of when Tiger Woods first came on the scene in his sport, and at a fraction of his current size was belting the ball further down the fairway than players who had 40 pounds on him. Ovechkin's not blasting the puck using brute force – it's technique, like the perfect golf swing, and it's beautiful to watch him pick the corners at full speed.

It's genius at work.

Generally when you talk about the great shooters in hockey's history, you think of players like the Hulls – Bobby and his son Brett – but they didn't hit, skate and create space nearly as much as Ovechkin does. He's an anomaly – a freak of nature, essentially – and at 23 and in only his fourth NHL campaign may already lay claim to the title of the sport's most lethal shooter.

If he plays like that, I don't know that the Penguins have the personnel to shut him down. (And it's hard not to think ahead to what a potential Ovechkin-Chara matchup in Round 3 might look like.)

Ovechkin certainly seems to be having fun.

"Sick game," he said at the postgame presser. "Sick three goals by me and him. If I was Capitals fans, I would be very happy right now.

"The atmosphere right now its unbelievable in town. You can see all the red. I'm probably afraid to go home right now."

Ovechkin has 21 of his team's 59 shots on goal in this series — 36 per cent — which is up from the 19 per cent he averaged during the season. He had 12 in this game alone, and the Penguins didn't do nearly enough in terms of limiting his opportunities. Ovechkin played seven and a half minutes on the power play, so he'll get his chances there, but eight of his shots were at even strength and two of those beat Marc-Andre Fleury.

A few more thoughts:

• All of this crowing about Ovechkin's hat trick isn't to take anything away from what Crosby did in this game. He was terrific, too, albeit in a more understated fashion, and confounded the Caps defence down in the crease area. They either need Mike Green to get more physical on him in front of the net or give the matchup to someone else because Crosby's own genius was at work on his three goals from in close. "Sidney was outstanding — it's incredible how good he is around the net," Green said. "He was carrying his team, but tonight — we had the top gun tonight."
• Crosby's probably never going to hear the end of the fact he complained about hats on the ice. At a game with two hat tricks. (I love the kid's competitiveness, but sometimes it doesn't manifest itself in as compelling a way as Ovechkin's.)
  
• Pittsburgh is getting slaughtered in the faceoff circle, mainly by Sergei Fedorov and David Steckel. The Pens won just eight of 23 defensive zone draws (35%), and Evgeni Malkin essentially wasn't taking any key faceoffs given his ineptitude at the dot. Washington's as dangerous a puck possession team as there is in the league, and they're getting it the vast majority of the time right off the bat.
• Speaking of Malkin, most pundits are being rather kind in their criticism so far, but he was pathetic in this game – hurting his team more than helping in several key instances. He and Ovechkin may have finished 1-2 in the scoring race (and likely the Hart voting) but there's no comparison so far in this series. And it'll be a short one if Malkin doesn't show up soon.
  
• The bottom line is that the Penguins have some solid options on the back end defensively that should be able to handle the task of limiting Ovechkin's chances, and they've simply fallen short. Neither team could shutdown the two marquee stars in this one, and that's obviously going to be the series key going forward. And when Pens coach Dan Bylsma says "the good news is it should be pretty clear what we need to get better at and what we need to focus on" he could have just drawn a giant '8' on the blackboard. Stopping AO is their game plan for Wednesday.
  
• Chris Kunitz had an ugly crosscheck to the head of Simeon Varlamov prior to Crosby's final goal that will get a look from the NHL's disciplinarians (and plenty of play from the pundits). Varlamov was terrific again.
  

It really doesn't look good for Pittsburgh, especially if Kris Letang is going to miss significant time with whatever hand/arm injury he suffered in this one. Even with him in the lineup, I'm not sure any team can beat one led by Ovechkin playing like this in four of the next five games.

I suppose we'll see.