Out of the quiet of a Sunday off day came a harsh return to the rink for the Capitals on Monday morning. Shortly after the conclusion of the team’s 10:30 am practice session at MedStar Capitals Iceplex, Caps coach Spencer Carbery gave an update on the status of center P-L Dubois, who suffered a lower body injury in Friday’s home game against the New York Islanders.
“He’s going to be out for an extended period of time,” says Carbery of Dubois.
Queried as to whether surgery might be necessary, it’s an unknown at this point.
“We still need to gather information at this point, so I can’t really disclose any more than he’s going to be out for an extended period of time,” says Carbery.
What we do know is the loss of Dubois is a significant one. He was one of Washington’s best players last season, night in and night out, when he had arguably as good a campaign as any two-way center in the League since 2007-08. That’s as far back as naturalstattrick.com has data, and over that span, there have been 119 instances of a forward being on the ice for 70 or more of his team’s goals at 5-on-5. (Data is prorated for seasons shortened due to lockout and pandemic.)
Of those 119 forwards, only two achieved the feat of being on the ice for 70 or more of their team’s goals for while also having an offensive zone deployment rate below 50 percent, over a full 82-game season.
The two players to turn the trick are Dubois last season and Florida’s Sasha Barkov in 2018-19, and both are now out of the lineup on a longterm basis for their respective teams in '25-26.
In his first season with the Caps in 2024-25, Dubois played all 82 games and was on the ice for 73 Washington goals at 5-on-5, tied with Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby for third-most among all NHL forwards (Nikita Kucherov with 82 and Kirill Marchenko with 75 had more).
Here’s the kicker: despite starting only 47.98 percent of his faceoffs in the offensive zone – and being matched up against top tier competition every night – Dubois was only on the ice for 44 goals against in 1,147 minutes at 5-on-5, a plus-29 (73-44) differential. Compare that to Crosby’s plus-1 (73-72) despite getting 69.37 percent of his starts in the offensive zone and playing 125 more minutes at 5-on-5 than Dubois.
Tasked with shutting down one of the opposition’s top lines, Dubois and his linemates – most typically Connor McMichael and Tom Wilson – not only did their job well, but they also did so while contributing significantly to their own team’s attack. And by coming out ahead against an opponent’s top line, the Dubois trio enabled Alex Ovechkin and Dylan Strome’s line to have less challenging matchups on certain nights, especially at home.
Dubois established single-season highs in both assists (46) and points (66) while finishing in a tie for eighth with 33 assists at 5-on-5. Only five forwards – David Pastrnak, Kucherov, Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon and Connor McDavid – all of whom logged more 5-on-5 minutes than Dubois, had more first assists (21) than Dubois at 5-on-5 last season.
“And a lot of nights, we probably got a win,” said Dubois, when told of his rare achievement last season. “I had 66 points last year, but there’s a lot of games I didn’t have a point. But if I dominated in the games that I didn’t have a point, then I still did something to help our team win.
“That’s my mindset. There are games when I drive home and I had a goal and an assist, and I’m like, ‘I didn’t really play well; it just went in.’ And then the next night, I dominated their line, or our line dominated their line, I played really well, I hit a post, I had zero goals and zero assists. And on the drive home, I’m like, ‘Wow, that was a really good game. I had a lot of fun tonight.’
“For me, it’s never really been about the points. It’s more about how well I can play and how our line can play, and how our line can outplay their top line, or whoever we’re playing against. At the end of the day, that’s really the measuring stick for me.”
That’s the very definition of an elite two-way NHL center, and that’s what the Caps will be missing for however long Dubois is on the sidelines.
“The biggest thing I noticed playing with Dubie is he's got a real good motor,” says McMichael. “He never gets tired. It seems like he's always winning puck battles at the end of his shifts, getting pucks out late. We played against a lot of top lines last year, and I just noticed that Dubie is all over them. He's a big body, so he doesn't give them any time and space. He's tough on the dot; he uses his strength. Good players, they don't want to go up against guys like that.”
Now, the Caps will look to a 24-year-old McMichael, a 23-year-old Hendrix Lapierre and a 23-year-old Justin Sourdif to help them fill the void left by Dubois’ absence from the middle of its top six forward group.
“It’s a huge hole,” says Carbery. “Arguably right up there last year with one of our most valuable players and most important players on our roster. I’m not going to sit here and sugarcoat it and say that you can replace him at this point in the year. But you still can be a good hockey team and win a lot of hockey games with injuries; that’s part of the attrition that you need to be able to handle in this League.
“And so that’s the way that we’ll focus on, is he’s out now and we’ll need other players to step up, we’ll need the entire group to do a little bit more – including the coaching staff – and that’s the way that we’ll look at it, and that’s how we’ll approach it.”
Barkov, a three-time winner of the Selke Trophy, awarded to the NHL’s best defensive forward, has been on long-term injured reserve all season. Barkov suffered a right knee injury in training camp and after undergoing surgery in late September, he is expected to be sidelined 7-9 months.
Playing without Barkov, the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Panthers own a 6-5-1 record this season, identical to the Caps’ record a dozen games deep in the season.
In 2018-19, a 23-year-old Barkov was on the ice for exactly 70 Florida goals at 5-on-5, despite starting only 45.63 percent of his shifts in the offensive zone. He was on the ice for 64 goals against at 5-on-5, for a plus-6 (70-64) goal differential. Offensively, Barkov had a career year with 35 goals and 96 points, he won the Lady Byng Trophy, and he finished fifth in Selke balloting, after finishing fourth the prior season. Barkov won his first Selke in 2020-21.
Dubois averaged just 17:18 per night in ice time (15:04 at even strength) last season compared to Barkov’s 22:21 (16:46 at even strength) in 2018-19. Furthermore, Barkov averaged 2.3 points per 60 minutes in 2018-19, while Dubois outdid him (2.41 points per 60) in 2024-25.
As for the ’18-19 Panthers, the Bob Boughner-coached outfit finished fifth in the Atlantic Division with 86 points, a dozen points south of the playoff cutline, despite what is still Barkov’s best offensive season from a point total standpoint.
in 2024-25, Dubois was instrumental in the Caps’ 20-point leap forward in the standings from the previous season, and in them advancing beyond the first round of the playoffs for the first time in seven years.
One could argue Dubois’ ’24-25 season was one of the best for a “two-way center” – an admittedly rare bird in the NHL these days – in almost the last two decades, especially when that player’s impact on that player’s team that season is factored in.
“And that’s exactly what he did,” says Carbery. “Right away, from day one, it was a seamless transition for [Dubois] to play those tough matchups and those tough minutes. And he flourished; he was great.
“And it’s funny, but his production at the beginning of the year, he was really struggling to finish, and he wasn’t picking up a lot of points, but he was playing great. And that’s what I kept telling him. I was like, ‘Listen, I know you want to produce, and you want to score goals and they’re not going in for you right now and you’re not picking up points, but you’re playing great and we’re winning hockey games. And he was playing those hard matchups, which frees [Nic Dowd] up a little bit, it frees Stromer up, and it has all of these ramifications throughout our lineup that helped us to be successful last year.”
Aside from the expected absence of now-retired winger TJ Oshie, the Caps were remarkably healthy last season; they were able to run out the same six defensemen in 59 consecutive contests, and they had seven players play all 82 games and 11 – virtually half the roster – played at least 80. Four of the seven who had perfect attendance last season have already missed action in the first dozen games of 2025-26.
