Rangers need to beat Caps or go home

WASHINGTON -- History, Winston Churchill said, "will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."

With sticks and pucks, the Capitals and Rangers will be trying to write some sort of history of thei own Saturday afternoon in Game 5 of their best-of-seven Eastern Conference quarterfinal series.

The Capitals, ahead 3-1, are very close to vanquishing the ghosts of previous April losses. The underdog Rangers, who blew a 3-0 lead and lost, 4-3, in the second overtime Wednesday night, are focusing on the immediate future: Win or go home. But each is at least musing about the distant, and recent, past.

Rangers coach John Tortorella was asked Friday if he used any history of NHL comebacks as a motivator.

"Nah. First of all, I don't remember some of it," he said. "I just think this team here doesn't need to go to history, or far back. I think this team has, for the past few weeks, fought through a lot of different things in finding their way. I just sense . . . I'll be honest with you, it took me until [Thursday] afternoon to swallow the loss. It was one of the tougher ones I've lived through. But once you swallow it and you puke it out . . . I just have such a good feeling. I just feel good about our club."

Tortorella said he didn't watch the Blackhawks, down 3-1 in games against the top-seeded Canucks, battle back with a 5-0 win Thursday night to force a Game 6 in Chicago and plant a seed of doubt in Vancouver. Goaltender Henrik Lundqvist and several other Rangers did tune in, and they found some promising signs.

"I saw the first period," said Lundqvist, who will start his 31st consecutive game Saturday. "It just shows that it can change really fast. The first three games, it looked like Vancouver [was] . . . the best team in the playoffs."

In the first round of the 2009 playoffs, Washington rebounded from a 3-1 deficit to beat the Rangers. Last season the Caps bowed out of the playoffs in the first round after leading Montreal 3-1. Lundqvist senses a trend.

"I think you're going to see that even more," he predicted. "Things can change so fast because the difference between teams is so small. Maybe in the past, when you had a 3-1 lead, it usually meant the other team was a lot better. I don't think that's the case anymore. It's more about finding ways to win games, and this series has been very tight. It could have been a different story here, with some luck or whatever. I don't think it's impossible anymore. We see this as achievable."

Without scoring on the power play, which is 1-for-18 in the series, the Rangers might not achieve anything but an early exit.

"We just have to be more desperate than them," said defenseman Bryan McCabe, the power-play quarterback, who hasn't been as effective as hoped since being acquired from the Florida Panthers at the trade deadline. "We need to get more shots through."

Or perhaps they will need a fortunate bounce to extend the series to Game 6 at Madison Square Garden on Monday. Artem Anisimov scored the first playoff goal of his career at 5:24 of the second period in Game 4 when, from behind the net, he threw the puck in front and it caromed off the skate of defenseman John Erskine.

"I tried that all season and it usually misses and goes down the ice," Anisimov said. "The other night I said, 'Why not? I have nothing to lose.' "

At this point, neither do the Rangers.