NHL Playoffs 2012: Preview and Prediction for Game 5 of Capitals vs. Rangers

As the scene in the Washington Capitals vs. New York Rangers series shifts back to the Big Apple for Game 5 tonight, one gets the feeling that the location is not the only thing about to change.

A series that figured to be good is slowly turning into one that will be great.

The No. 1 seeded Rangers have found out, the hard way, that the Caps win over the Bruins was no fluke.

The Caps, meanwhile, have painfully discovered that these Rangers will be much more difficult to get rid of than the team it eliminated in five games last year.

With four games in the books and nothing really determined, the winds of change seem about ready to blow through this series in more ways than one.

Possibly the biggest change that might be taking place is that these two teams feel like they are now on the verge of developing some true dislike for each other.

Despite the teams familiarity with each other, and despite the Caps ending the Rangers season in two of the past three playoffs, we have not yet really seen the two teams get into it with each other that much.

That looks ready to change after the hit that Alexander Ovechkin laid on Dan Girardi in Game 4. Many have called it a cheap shot worthy of, at a minimum, a fine or perhaps even a suspension.

Others have called it a clean hit.

Almost everyone has an opinion on the matter.

Girardi indicated that Ovechkin was head-hunting; Ovechkin denied it. Both guys more or less downplayed the incident.

Still, you have to wonder if this will be the incident that makes this series get nasty. The Caps have not gone to the extremes that the Senators did against the Rangers, and the series has remained largely cordial because of that.

Something tells me that will change tonight with so much on the line.

All that aside, a key for both teams is getting that all important first goal. The team that has scored first has won every game in this series so far. That will be something to keep an eye on as Game 5 unfolds.

For the Capitals, they must make a decision as to how they approach Game 5 from a strategic standpoint. In Games 3 and 4, the Caps opened up the offense a bit, and this was met with mixed results.

They generated more scoring opportunities, but they were also more susceptible to the Rangers' aggressive forecheck, something the Caps have not solved so far.

With the series now at its tipping point, do the Caps revert to a more defensive approach, such as what worked so well against Boston? That could be a key deciding factor in Game 5.

The Caps must also feel pretty good that their big guns are now stepping forward and making a difference. Ovechkin got the first goal of Game 4.

Nicklas Backstrom showed he can be physical, as well as deadly, on his goal in Game 4.

Alexander Semin was all over the place in Game 4 and made a huge play that helped to set up Mike Green's game-winning power-play tally.

If the Caps' stars continue to perform, the Rangers might be in trouble.

And can the Caps, who were terrible on the road in the regular season, continue to find success away from DC here in the postseason?

For the Rangers, it is not as if they are playing badly. Not at all.

But it does seem as though they may have underestimated how good the Caps have become at doing something the Rangers have excelled at for years—blocking shots and getting in shooting lanes.

That was what the last 30 seconds of Game 4 was all about for the Rangers. They could not get a shot to the net when they needed it most.

Whether the Rangers familiarity with the Caps put them in the mindset where they assumed that Washington would eventually go back to being the Caps of old or whether New York underestimated how committed to defense the Caps have become, it seems as though the Rangers are not yet adjusting.

Ryan Callahan summed the situation up best for the Rangers:

"The big thing is frustration. We can't let that creep in. We need to just keep banging away, we've got to keep playing. We're not frustrated in here. We realize what we have to do. We just have to go out there and do it."

That's as good advice as any, and words the Rangers should follow.

For New York, one also has to wonder how they will react to the pressure of this game, on home ice, with so much on the line. Clearly, the Blue Shirts do not want a repeat of the Ottawa series, where they dropped Game 5 in New York and had to win the next two to avoid a startling upset.

The odds of them repeating that against a team with much more playoff experience, and more talent, than Ottawa had would not seem to be that good.

Prediction

Three seems to be the magic number in this series, especially for the Caps. If they can get to three goals, Braden Holtby can keep the Rangers in check enough to win the game for the Caps. If they only get two goals, or fewer, the Rangers should win.

I feel overtime coming in this one with Brooks Laich finally breaking through in this series to give the Caps a 3-2 win and a similar lead in the series.