Now that Mike Sullivan and Barry Trotz have matched wits in a playoff series for three consecutive years Jessie Bates III Bengals Jersey , they harbor very few secrets.

The Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals know each other inside-out from 17 postseason games since 2016. The coaches are very familiar with the dynamics of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Alex Ovechkin and just about all the other moving pieces.

”Every move that we make there’s a counter move, and every move they make there’s a little counter move,” Trotz said. ”It’s funny: A lot of them are the same things that we’ve seen at different parts in the last couple series. They just come in different order sometimes at you. There’s only maybe so many bricks that you have and they are just lined up a different way all the time.”

Sullivan moved his pieces around as Pittsburgh tied the series at 2-2, and now Trotz gets the next chance in their chess match for Game 5 on Saturday (7 p.m. EDT, NBC). After Alex Ovechkin put no shots on net for the third time in his playoff career – with Tom Wilson suspended the first of three games – it starts with finding the right mix on the top line.

Trotz tried Devante Smith-Pelly with Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov, and that trio was outshot 21-9 at even strength. Maybe Smith-Pelly will be back on that line, maybe he won’t after the Capitals coaching staff pored over video to see what went wrong.

”We’re looking at that,” Trotz said. ”I think that whole line has to be better for us. They’re going to need to be productive.”

Pittsburgh’s top line of Jake Guentzel, Sidney Crosby and whoever else has been incredibly productive. All 10 of the Penguins’ goals in the series have come with Crosby on the ice, and Guentzel leads all players in the playoffs with 10 goals and 21 points.

”I just think he’s the best player in the game,” Sullivan said of Crosby, who played with Guentzel and Dominik Simon in Game 4. ”Sid certainly makes everybody around him better players but you’ve got to give Jake a lot of credit for the game that he’s playing.”

The Penguins got speedy winger Carl Hagelin back from injury while the Capitals lost Wilson. That’s a disadvantage for Washington, but the spotlight is still on Trotz to make the necessary adjustments as Capitals-Penguins becomes a best-of-three series.

”I think every game both teams recalibrate, if you will, in some areas,” Trotz said. ”There’s little changes we’ve noticed with them, and there’s some changes that we added in. Some of them worked and some of them didn’t have the effect that we wanted to. At the end of the day Authentic Brian Allen Jersey , it’s two guys going nose to nose, battling for position, battling for free pucks, executing on plays under pressure. Once we put a plan in place, we put the players in charge, really.”

CHESS MATCH II

In the West, Nashville coach Peter Laviolette also made a key change in the series between the NHL’s top two teams, benching Game 2 double-overtime hero Kevin Fiala in favor of veteran Scott Hartnell for more size, strength and experience against Winnipeg. That, plus replacing Alexei Emelin with Yannick Weber, allowed Nashville to better counter imposing Winnipeg defenseman Dustin Byfuglien in tying the series at 2-2. Game 5 is Saturday night in Nashville (9:30 p.m. EDT, NBCSN).

Laviolette said making a change involves taking into account the opposition, building, a player’s experience and style of play.

”They’re never easy,” Laviolette said. ”But I thought the guys that went in the lineup last night did a really good job. Hartnell played a good game. He did what we were hoping he would do, and I thought Yannick Weber went in and played a good game.”

With the Jets held without a shot for the first 12 minutes of the third period, Winnipeg coach Paul Maurice started mixing up his lines. He swapped centers, skating Mark Scheifele with Nikolaj Ehlers and Patrik Laine with Paul Stastny between Blake Wheeler and Kyle Connor. Laine scored his first goal of the series and first in the postseason since Game 2 on April 13 against Minnesota.

DERBY DAY ODDS

The betting favorite to win these two series will be whoever comes out on top in Game 5, based on history alone. The 256 previous times where it was tied at 2 Mike McGlinchey Color Rush Jersey , the Game 5 winner went on to win the series 78.9 percent of the time. So there’s no urgency lacking.

”We’re going to need our best effort of the series probably in Game 5 to get a win,” Washington defenseman Matt Niskanen said. ”I think we’re building a belief that we can beat these guys. We know we’re going to have to play really well, but it’s possible. We think we can do it.”

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AP Sports Writers Will Graves in Pittsburgh and Teresa M. Walker in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed.

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As NFL training camps opened this week, complete with interminable speculation about position battles, rookies who might make an impact and what players can or can’t do while ”The Star-Spangled Banner” is playing, let’s remember two players who aren’t suiting up.

Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid are good enough to be playing for someone.

That much is beyond debate.

But the league has decided to make an example of them, a clear warning to its employees that only so much social activism will be tolerated even while it feigns a sense of respecting their desire to protest during the national anthem.

If the NFL were really concerned about its players, it wouldn’t be denying these two their well-earned right to make a living.

Rest assured, history won’t be kind when it looks back on the way Kaepernick and Reid were treated by the NFL.

”Both of those guys are NFL talents. Both of them are quality players that can contribute to a roster and contribute to a team winning. They’ve proven it,” New Orleans Saints tight end Benjamin Watson said. ”I do think that 100 percent of the reason why they’re not on a roster is the other stuff that they’re standing for is outweighing the risk a team wants to take to put them on a roster.”

Kaepernick and Reid are following the same path as social warriors who came before them.

Muhammad Ali, who was stripped of his heavyweight boxing title and barred from the ring for more than three years after he refused induction into the military during the Vietnam War.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who defiantly stood with their fists in the air on the medal podium at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics to protest the way black people were – and still are – being treated in America.

Ali, Smith and Carlos were vilified at the time.

Now, they’re viewed at heroes – but only after making huge personal, professional and financial sacrifices to stand up for what they believed.

Kaepernick and Reid are making those same sacrifices.

”I do think it’s sad and I want those guys to be on teams because I know they’re good enough to play,” Watson said. ”I hate to see them not be employed in the National Football League, where they should be Cheap Chad Thomas Jersey , simply because they decided to protest and bring attention to systemic oppression, police brutality, injustice – all the things they stated over and over again, which I think are things that we all should be concerned about.”

As of Friday, Kaepernick has gone 572 days since his last snap in the NFL. Tellingly enough, he turned in one of his better performances in what might go down as his final game.

On New Year’s Day 2017, playing behind a leaky offensive line that left him running for his life (he was sacked five times), Kaepernick completed 17 of 22 passes for 215 yards and a touchdown in San Francisco’s 25-23 loss to Seattle. His 122.3 rating was the seventh highest of his 69 career games.

But the NFL would have you believe he’s not good enough to play in a league that will employ just under 100 quarterbacks this season, many of them older than Kaepernick (who is still more than three months shy of his 31st birthday, presumably just entering what should be his prime years) and lacking a resume that includes leading his team to the Super Bowl.

Of course, we all know the real reason Kaepernick has effectively been blacklisted from the league – his decision to first sit, then kneel during the national anthem throughout the 2016 season, sparking a debate that carried all the way to the White House.

Reid bravely joined Kaepernick in his stoic, symbolic gesture, and carried on the kneeling when his former teammate was sidelined for the entire 2016 season.

For that, he’s now paying the price.

Despite being beyond qualified for a spot in the NFL – 26 years old, a former first-round pick, a starter in 69 of 70 games over five years with the 49ers, 10 career interceptions Youth Miami Dolphins Jerseys , an average of 65 tackles per season, a Pro Bowler in 2013 – Reid has been deemed unworthy of employment by each and every one of the league’s 32 teams.

What makes the treatment of Kaepernick and Reid even more perplexing: The owners and their non-blacklisted players continue to be locked in a back-and-forth squabble over whether protesting during the anthem is a legitimate way to address social injustice in this country.

(Spoiler alert: It is.)

The issue remains a thorn in the league’s side, even after Kaepernick and Reid were cast aside.

”Nothing lasts forever, and this is coming close to lasting way too long,” Cincinnati Bengals owner Mike Brown groaned.

Before there’s any more discussion about sitting or kneeling or staying in the locker room, the players – all of them, black and white – should demand justice for Kaepernick and Reid.

While both have filed collusion grievances, the NFL has lots of highly paid lawyers who will surely try to drag this thing out as long as possible, soaking up prime seasons they’ll never get back.

But all those players who are lucky enough to have a job, some of whom were just as visible and vocal in their calls for social justice, should be pondering what they can do to help get Kaepernick and Reid back on the field.

Maybe a one-day sickout during training camp. Or kneeling en masse before the first game. Perhaps, as a last resort, they should consider an actual strike.

Like Kaepernick and Reid, they need to be willing to make some huge sacrifices.

After all, they could be next.

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Paul Newberry is.