Caps Game Night – 7:30 p.m. vs. Rangers

Game 6

Series: 3-2, New York

When: Wednesday, May 9

Where: Verizon Center

Time: 7:30 p.m.

TV: NBC-SN

Radio: WFED-1500 AM

There’s nowhere left to go for the Capitals. Win Game 6 tonight in the Eastern Conference semifinals against the New York Rangers and there will be a Game 7 at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night at 7:30 p.m. Lose and the players will file off the ice for one final time, meet Thursday at Kettler Iceplex and then most will depart for points across North America and Europe. You wouldn’t see most of them again until August provided the NHL opens training camp on time. Or it could be longer than that.

“You don’t want season to start over for next year,” forward Alex Ovechkin said. “And you don’t want season be ended tonight. I think is gonna be do-or-die, I think. Right now everybody knows and everybody understands we just can’t go home right now.”

Best way to avoid that is to win. Figure on the Rangers coming out hard again – as they did for the start of Game 5. They won’t have the Madison Square Garden crowd to help lift them to another level. But this was a team angry at itself for failing to come out hard in Game 4 in Washington when it was up 2-1 in the series and had a chance to put the Caps in a chokehold. New York won’t want to make that mistake again.

“We definitely think that we are good enough to continue and good enough to beat a team like New York even though they’re playing as hard as they are,” defenseman Karl Alzner said. “It’s tough when we’re staying right there with them and at times we’re better, at times they’re better. It’s the way playoff hockey should be.”

If New York does come out on the forecheck as hard as they did on Monday night, expect the Caps to counter. Could we see our first six-goal game of this series? None of these teams have scored more than three in a given game. But Washington could have had two or three more in the third period with multiple odd-man rushed as the Rangers pushed for the tie, which they eventually got with 7.6 seconds left.  

“They come out, they threw everything at the net. Scoring chances, they were pretty even after all that,” Hunter said of Game 5. “The chances we got, because they were so aggressive, were almost breakaways, two-on-ones, great scoring chances. If they come out aggressive, we have to chip pucks and get the odd-man rushes and bury them.”

“New York does a great job of keeping us out of those high-chance areas in front of the net and stuff,” Alzner said. “But we’ve got to find a way to get through there, put all those pucks towards the net and we’ve got to hit. You know their “D” are going to be feeling pretty tired and we’ve got to keep going at them, don’t give them the confidence to stay in and pinch like they have been, or having the gaps like they do.”

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