This time, Tomas Plekanec spoke with his stick.

The Montreal Canadiens forward, who raised eyebrows earlier this week for his critical remarks about the Washington Capitals goaltending situation, backed up his words by scoring the overtime winner to give his club a 3-2 victory in the series opener at the Verizon Center on Thursday.

Plekanec corralled a bouncing puck outside the Washington blue line and then fired a screen shot from the high slot past Capitals goalie Jose Théodore 13:19 into the first extra period. He decided to shoot even though his linemate Mike Cammalleri was tapping his stick for a pass.

"He always does that and that’s why I don’t shoot much," Plekanec said.

To which Cammalleri replied, "I tell him 'Plek, I’m like 7-11, I'm always open.' Then we'll look at the video and there will be four guys on me. If he missed I would have given him an earful."

In the pre-series build up, Plekanec agreed with a reporter that the Capitals were lacking in the goaltending department. "It's not as though we are facing [Martin] Brodeur or [Ryan] Miller," Plekanec said. "They don't have a dominant goaltender."

When told of Plekanec's remarks, Théodore responded: "Tomas who? Jagr? Oh, Plekanec. OK. I thought you meant Jagr."

Plekanec was asked to rehash his thoughts on the Capitals goaltending moments after he beat Théodore for the win.

"No, I wasn't thinking about it," he said. "It was the first day that quote came up in the newspapers. Obviously, I didn't like it, but we had a good laugh about it with the guys. [Théodore ] had a good quote, too.

"Again, I never said anything bad about the Capitals goaltending. I said they have very good goalies and they proved it. I would never say anything disrespectful about [Théodore]. If they took it that way, then that’s what happens."

His Montreal teammates continued to have fun with the incident. They put the No. 68 beside his name on the lineup on the dressing room whiteboard.

"That was pretty good, too," Plekanec said.

'It's only one game'

Plekanec wasn't the only player from Czech Republic or Slovakia on his game in the series opener.

Canadiens goalie Jaroslav Halak, a Slovakian, was busy and at his best with 45 saves, while Montreal defenceman Jaroslav Spacek of the Czech Republic did an outstanding job checking Washington superstar Alex Ovechkin, who failed to put a shot on Halak.

Halak was especially good in the first period, when he made 18 saves to make sure that his club escaped with a 1-1 tie.

"It's only one game," he said. "But we knew we could play a lot better than we did at the end of the season."

That was the same message from Spacek. The Canadiens didn’t always have Spacek on the ice when Ovechkin hopped over the boards because they didn't have last change. But for the most part, Spacek was immediately on Ovechkin every time he touched the puck.

"He had zero shots, but he had probably 10 blocked shots," Spacek said. "He tried hard for it. The whole line played pretty good. They had a couple chances. I stepped up and closed the gap and that was probably the reason we had success.

"[Ovechkin] is waiting for his chance. You give him one little sniff and the puck will end up in our net. I think we played a focused game on his all game long. We didn’t give that line too many opportunities on the rush."

'They took him away pretty good'

Spacek made the defensive play of the game when he stretched out to block a Nicklas Backstrom pass attempt during a three-on-one Capitals rush in overtime.

Montreal coach Jacques Martin preached to his team the importance of back checking from the forwards to take away any possible scoring chances that Ovechkin might gain while trailing the play.

"He didn't play good," Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau said of his superstar. "I mean, they gapped up on him really well, but I don't think Alex played very well. I can't put my finger on it right now, but when you get 50 shots on goal and Ovechkin doesn't get any and you have four power plays. They took him away pretty good, but I just didn't think he was very good tonight."

Ovechkin didn't shed much light on his effort.

"It's the playoffs," he said. "You try to do well every shift. I think play a great first period. We had a lot of great chances, but we didn't score. We scored first goal and we feel good and then we stopped playing."

The Canadiens scored first with a Cammalleri goal in the first period, but Washington defenceman Joe Corvo tied the game with a screen. The Capitals grabbed their first lead early in the third period on a Backstrom goal, but the upset-minded Montrealers tied the game less than seven minutes later with a super rush up the ice from the Scott Gomez, Brian Gionta and Benoit Pouliot that resulted in a tip-in from Gomez after a brilliant pass from Gionta.

This was the first overtime game of the 2010 Stanley Cup playoffs and sixth consecutive game to open the post-season that was decided by a goal.