The last time the Washington Capitals won a playoff series, they hoisted the Stanley Cup above their heads. It has been almost seven years since that June day in 2018, and it has been 10 years since they clinched a series at home.

In Game 5 of their first-round series against the Montreal Canadiens on Wednesday night at Capital One Arena, the Capitals have a chance to change that. With a win in Game 4 in Montreal on Sunday, Washington took a 3-1 series lead and is one win from advancing to a second-round matchup with the Carolina Hurricanes.

The cliché is that the fourth win of a series is always the hardest to achieve, a sentiment the Capitals hinted at Tuesday. They’ve seen what Montreal can do when it’s in desperation mode; an ugly loss in Game 3 left plenty of lessons for Washington. The Capitals know the Canadiens made the playoffs by being a resilient, scrappy, never-say-die group — not that dissimilar from the Capitals of a year ago.

“I’d like to see our best game of the series [Wednesday] night,” Coach Spencer Carbery said. “I don’t even need to throw out all the clichés about the fourth game. I think that the easiest thing to point to is the Montreal Canadiens and what they’ve been through as a team. If you just look at this team and the resiliency and the post-4 Nations tournament and all the stuff that they’ve been through, you know exactly what type of game you’re going to get from the Montreal Canadiens [on Wednesday night] when they’re on the brink of elimination.”

Tom Wilson changed Game 4, and perhaps the series as a whole, with his crushing hit on Alexandre Carrier early in the third period. When Wilson leveled Carrier, Montreal led 2-1. Fifteen seconds later, it was 2-2, and the Capitals went on to win, 5-2. More of the same will be required in Game 5.

“They’ve been playing hard, desperate hockey for a while,” Wilson said. “They clawed their way into the playoffs. They’ve played us really hard to this point in the series, so we’re not expecting anything different. We’re going to get their best game, so we’ve got to come with ours.”

The Capitals could get a boost from winger Aliaksei Protas, who was a full participant in Tuesday’s practice and looks ready to go. Protas hasn’t played since he was cut on the top of his left foot by a skate blade against the Chicago Blackhawks on April 4.

Carbery has danced around divulging specifics about Protas’s return, but Tuesday his remarks about the winger shifted from “if” to “when.”

“When he gets back in, you’re hoping that — usually it’s different for every player — you’re hoping he can pick up as quickly as possible,” Carbery said. “[The hope is] it takes him maybe a period, a couple shifts, to get acclimated with the pace of play, the physicality, the things that are required in playoff hockey.”

Captain Alex Ovechkin took a maintenance day Tuesday and is expected to play Wednesday. With Ovechkin missing practice, Washington didn’t take line rushes, so any confirmation of Protas’s return won’t arrive until pregame warmups Wednesday.

When Protas does come back, he’ll provide a significant lift to the Capitals’ penalty kill, which has struggled in the series even as Washington has pushed Montreal to the brink of elimination. The Canadiens have scored five power-play goals in four games, including two in both games in Montreal. The Capitals are missing defenseman Martin Fehervary, who led all of Washington’s defensemen in shorthanded ice time but had season-ending knee surgery last week.

Without Fehervary and Protas, it has been difficult for the penalty killers. On the other side of the ice, the Canadiens have loaded up a power play with Cole Caufield, Ivan Demidov, Lane Hutson, Nick Suzuki and Juraj Slafkovsky that at times has appeared unstoppable.

“I still think we’re doing what we need to do,” center Nic Dowd said. “We just have to limit their opportunities. You have to limit their ability to break the puck in clean and get set up, because that’s where you’re going to end up having problems. If you give them more opportunities and more chances to shoot the puck, no matter if they’re creating high-danger situations or not, something bad has the possibility of happening. I think that’s what’s important, that we continue to limit their time and space and easy entries and then go from there.”

Washington gave up two ­power-play goals on four chances in Game 4 and did not convert on its five tries with the man advantage. In what could be a series-ending Game 5, flipping the special teams battle will be an important element for the Capitals.

“You put yourself into a position to have success. Then when you have an opportunity to end a series and close a door, you have to take advantage of that,” Dowd said. “ … The job’s not done. We still have a lot of work to do. It’s going to be a really good game.”

“You always want a competitive team,” Wilson said. “You always want to win games. You always want a winning culture. Speaking of this group, we’ve done a good job this year. We’re motivated. We’re hungry to get this done. We want to win this series and we want the next one.”