NHL teams
Scott Burnside, ESPN Senior Writer 9y

W2W4: Islanders at Capitals, Game 5

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The seesaw affair that is this first-round series between the Washington Capitals and the New York Islanders returns to Verizon Center for Game 5 on Thursday evening at 7 ET, knotted at two games each. Here’s what to watch for in what will be a crucial tilt in the nation’s capital.

Lineup shuffle: The Capitals evened the series with a big overtime win in Game 4 on Long Island on Tuesday. Nicklas Backstrom provided the heroics with the OT winner but the tenor of the series was altered by a thunderous hit by Caps forward Tom Wilson on Islanders defenseman Lubomir Visnovsky, who is out indefinitely. Islanders head coach Jack Capuano will have seven defensemen take the warm-up Thursday night and decide between youngster Griffin Reinhart and Ryan Pulock, neither of whom has played an NHL playoff game. Up front, the Islanders look to change things up a bit again, with Mikhail Grabovski coming off injured reserve and going into the lineup, likely for Brock Nelson. The former Capital hasn’t played for the Isles since since suffering an upper-body injury Feb. 19. "Short shifts and keep it simple. I know Washington is a pretty strong team,” Grabovski said Thursday morning. Capuano acknowledged there might be some timing issues for Grabovski, but he said he’s an experienced player and it shows the depth of the Islanders team, especially among the forward group. Neither Travis Hamonic nor Visnovsky skated for the Islanders, while the Capitals are expected to ice the same lineup as they did in Game 4, which means Eric Fehr is still out and Andre Burakovsky is in.

Emotional shuffle: The hit on Visnovsky that resulted in a minor penalty to Wilson for charging amped up the emotion of this already closely contested series. After Game 4, Kyle Okposo told reporters that Wilson was “an idiot." Wilson, meanwhile, told reporters in the aftermath that if opponents are talking about him, that’s a good thing and teammate Brooks Laich was quoted as saying it was a “good” penalty. Ryan Strome said the Islanders are going to keep their focus where it needs to be, on winning a game, not anything else. “Obviously, the storylines have been drawn but I think with this group here, I think it’s important we stay focused,” Strome said. "We have a lot of guys that deliver hard hits. That’s in the past. We’ve got to move on, and whatever guys we have in the lineup, we have to move forward with. We’ve got a confident group. I think this group has a lot of will in us and I think all these guys in here are really focused on the goal and I think that hasn’t changed.” For his part, Capitals head coach Barry Trotz said Thursday he hasn’t followed the postgame discussion on the hit. “I really don’t care what they say or do,” he said. “There’ve been big hits on both sides. It’s just size and mass. When you have big bodies running into other bodies, there’s going to be carnage sometimes.”

Special teams key: The Capitals are a big, physical team (see, Wilson on Visnovsky), and given their penalty-killing expertise, they aren’t likely to change their approach in Game 5. The Capitals have killed off all 10 power-play opportunities enjoyed by the Islanders through four games. The Capitals' power play, so good during the regular season when it was tops in the league, hasn’t been much better than the Islanders', with just one goal on seven opportunities.

Fourth-line magic: The Islanders have scored 10 goals in the first four games of this series and the team’s fourth line of Matt Martin, Casey Cizikas and Cal Clutterbuck has contributed two of them and been a disruptive forechecking force. “It has to rub off," Capuano said of the line's efforts. "Because if you look at statistically and everybody talks about analytics in today’s game, they’re really not our fourth line, they’re probably our second line with how they’re contributing right now, so we have to have other guys step up, rise to the occasion. But when you get guys that play like [that] ... it has to be contagious. You have to play with a certain desperation in your game and attitude to your game, and that’s why those guys have really succeeded for us in this series up until this point. Other guys have to pick their game up."

Projected lineups:

Capitals

Alex Ovechkin-Nicklas Backstrom-Joel Ward

Marcus Johansson-Evgeny Kuznetsov-Jason Chimera

Andre Burakovsky-Jay Beagle-Troy Brouwer

Brooks Laich-Michael Latta-Tom Wilson

Defense

Brooks Orpik-John Carlson

Matt Niskanen-Karl Alzner

Mike Green-Tim Gleason

Goal

Braden Holtby

Islanders

Nikolay Kulemin-John Tavares-Ryan Strome

Josh Bailey-Frans Nielsen-Kyle Okposo

Anders Lee-Mikhail Grabovski-Tyler Kennedy

Matt Martin-Casey Cizikas-Cal Clutterbuck

Defense

Nick Leddy-Johnny Boychuk

Brian Strait-Calvin de Haan

Thomas Hickey-Griffin Reinhart or Ryan Pulock

Goal

Jaroslav Halak

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