I suspect you have answered your own question about the dial pointer by now. It was probably close in the first place, and you may as well set it back where it was for the time being.
I would go ahead and recap the radio and see how it works. An advantage of recapping a radio that already works (at least somewhat) is that you can try it out after every cap replacement or two, to make sure you haven't gone backwards.
Bad old caps wouldn't change the dial tracking. If you want to align the radio after recapping, part of that procedure will affect tracking. Keep in mind that these simple old radios are not precision laboratory instruments, so if you get the pointer to track pretty closely through the entire scale, that's victory.
Have fun.
Phil Nelson
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html