You can put three of Brent Johnson's 33 saves in the wow category: a rebound stop on Chuck Kobasew, a stuff of P.J. Axelsson's shorthanded breakaway, and a diving stick rejection of Blake Wheeler.

"If you're Washington, you're going to talk about the unbelievable saves your goaltender made, and we're going to call it missed opportunities," said Claude Julien. "We had some real quality opportunities there to score. I thought we could have made it a different game. But I thought that was the difference right there."

The Capitals got some early momentum in the first period when their forecheck -- one man very deep, everybody else closing off outlet passes in the neutral zone -- prevented the Bruins from breaking out cleanly. Nicklas Backstrom opened the scoring in the first, Alexandre Giroux made it a 2-0 game in the second, and Alex Ovechkin ended the night with an empty-netter.

* Manny Fernandez saw his seven-game winning streak come to an end. Fernandez couldn't be faulted for either of the goals he allowed -- a Backstrom deflection and Giroux's rebound after he stopped Viktor Kozlov. Fernandez also forced Giroux to shoot wide on a third-period penalty shot.

* Stephane Yelle acknowledged he initially thought he might miss some games after colliding with linesman Mark Shewchyk on Monday. But Yelle said he felt improvement yesterday and felt good today, leading to his return to the lineup. Yelle skated 16 shifts for 11:00 of ice time.

STICK SALUTE: Johnson. Was the difference-maker tonight.

SIN BIN: Patrice Bergeron. Had an uncharacteristically poor game on the draw, losing 13 of 19 faceoffs, while not providing enough offensive presence. Bergeron isn't getting much help from his linemates either. The No. 2 line has to jack up the heat on opposing defenses.