Jan. 1—Winter Classic: Philadelphia Flyers vs. Boston Bruins at Fenway Park.

Feb. 15-Feb. 28—Olympic break.

April 11—Regular season ends.

Peter Budaj made the most of a rare opportunity to shine.

Budaj stopped 39 shots, and Chris Stewart scored two goals in the Colorado Avalanche’ 4-1 victory over the Dallas Stars on Saturday night.

Milan Hejduk and Chris Durno, with his first NHL goal, also scored for the Avalanche. Alex Auld made 29 saves, and Steve Ott scored for the Stars, who suffered just their third regulation loss in December.
Colorado Avalanche right winger Chris Stewart, back, fires a shot between the legs of Dallas Stars defenseman Matt Niskanen for an empty-net goal in the third period of the Avalanche’s 4-1 victory in an NHL hockey game in Denver on Saturday, Dec. 26, 2009.

Budaj played an average of 45 games the previous four seasons but has become the forgotten backup with the stellar play of No. 1 goalie Craig Anderson. Budaj made just his seventh start of the season against the Stars, but he made it memorable with one of his best games in his five-year career.

“He played excellent,” Colorado coach Joe Sacco said. “He made some keys saves down the stretch.”

Budaj kept Dallas off the boards for most of the game with two big stops on defenseman Jeff Woywitka. The first came on a rebound late in the second and he made a glove save of Woywitka’s shot on a Stars’ 4-on-2 rush with 16:25 left in the third.

The Washington Capitals are up with a good start as they defeated the Boston Bruins in their season opener game Thursday night with a score of 4-1.
The Most Valuable Player of NHL for two times in a row, Alex Ovechkin, piloted the Capitals’ play that led to their victory. He had two goals and an assist during the game. His teammate, Jose Theodore, stopped 19 shots during the game that made it even harder for the Bruins to score.
Dennis Wideman, Bruins defenseman, said that Ovechkin is really the league’s superstar that works very hard and also hits strongly. He even compared Ovechkin to Rafael Nadal.
Other members of the team performed great during the play as well. Brooks Laich had two goals and an assist. Alexander Semin had two assists while Nicklas Backstrom had three.
The Capitals led the game during the second period as Semin had a drop pass to Ovechkin and made it right through Tim Thomas.
Ovechkin also said that the second goal on the second period was a big shoot. He also added that their defense was great during the play.
Bruins coach, Claude Julien, mentioned that they only had the worst condition for their best players during the game. He further said that they do not want to take away the credit from Ovechkin for doing great last time but there are still a lot of things to expect from their players if the condition turned out to be healthy for the Bruins.
Both teams won their own divisions during the previous season but did not further make it in the game because of their individual opponents. Boston did not grab the title last year after being defeated by Carolina while Washington was dumped by the last season’s champion the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Ovechkin just stated that their team wants to bounce back this time. They want to defeat everybody else and become the best team this season.
Julien just ended the night by saying that after their defeat, Bruins will even got better and that the Capitals and other teams should look after that.