Tonight at 7 p.m. ET, the Pittsburgh Penguins and New York Rangers take the ice at Madison Square Garden in New York City for Game 5 of their Eastern Conference Round 1 best-of-seven series as part of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Pittsburgh looks to thwart off elimination and send the series back to Pennsylvania while New York hopes to put an end to it and advance to the second round.
The Rangers and Penguins split the first two games of this series at MSG, but New York put a stranglehold on the series by taking both games in Pittsburgh and jumping out to a 3-1 series lead.
This game can be live streamed for free here.
Rookie Kevin Hayes scored his first career playoff goal in Game 4 on Wednesday over two minutes into overtime to give the Rangers their third 2-1 victory of the series and a commanding 3-1 series lead.
The Rangers won the Presidents' Trophy and set a franchise record for wins (53) and points (113) this season for moments like this, a chance to snuff out an opponent early on home ice.
"We worked hard all season long to get home ice and we're going to try to take that on our side because our fans have been supporting us all year," Rangers center Derick Brassard, who scored his third goal of the series in Game 4 said per NHL.com. "Our first two games [at Madison Square Garden] were pretty loud and it gave us a lot of energy on the ice. Obviously we'll try and take advantage of that. We don't want to look at the big picture. We just want to look at putting our best effort forward in Game 5."
The Penguins aren't looking to go anywhere and they remember from last year that 3-1 series leads can be fragile. Pittsburgh led New York 3-1 in the Eastern Conference semifinals last season only to fumble away the lead and lose in seven games.
Patric Hornqvist was the lone goal-scorer for Pittsburgh in Game 4 and the Penguins will not be relaxed heading into this game.
"We should be loose and going after it," captain Sidney Crosby told NHL.com of the team's mindset heading into Game 5. "You don't want to be tentative in [elimination] games; you've got to leave it all out there. That's all you can do, is be desperate and bring it back [to Pittsburgh]."
Crosby, who will play his 100th playoff game tonight, is tied with Hornqvist for the team lead with two tallies and three points in this series while Evgeni Malkin hasn't been 100 percent and has no points.
Rick Nash has paced the Blueshirts with four points in this series off of a goal and three assists while Brassard, Ryan McDonagh (1-2--3) and Dan Girardi (three assists) all have three points.
In between the pipes, New York turns to Henrik Lundqvist and he has yielded seven goals on 94 shots in the set.
Pittsburgh counters with Marc-Andre Fleury in the crease and he has turned aside 105 of the 114 shots he's faced.
The Penguins look to force another contest while the Rangers try to advance to Round 2 when the lights come up on Game 5 of the Stanley Cup playoffs live from Madison Square Garden in New York City.
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