OBSERVATIONS:

VITEK VANECEK and JAKE OETTINGER are symbolic of hitherto unknowns who have emerged in the first weeks of the new season. Hardly any Washington fans could have told you much about Vanecek before the first drop of the puck, but he's become a D.C. headliner. When Alex Ovechkin, Ilya Samsonov, Dmitry Orlov and Evgeny Kuznetsov wer…