{"id":477497,"date":"2025-11-09T11:08:49","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T16:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=477497"},"modified":"2025-11-09T11:08:49","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T16:08:49","slug":"washington-capitals-injury-concern-important-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2025\/11\/09\/washington-capitals-injury-concern-important-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington Capitals Have Injury Concern with Important Forward"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Overall the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2025\/11\/05\/ovechkin-washington-capitals-all-time-great-goal-milestone\" target=\"_self\">Washington Capitals<\/a> are off to an okay start, despite currently sitting seventh in the NHL&#8217;s Metropolitan Division standings. In saying that, defensively they remain a model for other NHL franchises, similar to 2024-25. However, they will now have to deal with a lengthy injury. We have learned, that on Friday one of their top forwards, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/d\/duboipi01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-11-09_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Pierre-Luc Dubois<\/a>, underwent surgery and will be out of action for three-to-four months. The surgery was on his abdominal and adductor muscles. Let&#8217;s figure out the impact to the Capitals lineup.<\/p>\n<h3>Centre Pierre-Luc Dubois Out 3-4 Months with Core-Muscular Injury<\/h3>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Pierre-Luc Dubois underwent surgery Friday \u201cto address injuries to his\u00a0abdominal and adductor muscles.\u201d He\u2019s expected to miss 3-4 months <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/N4wouJnMFu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/N4wouJnMFu<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; B\/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BR_OpenIce\/status\/1987544680972624222?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">November 9, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>This injury news for Pierre-Luc Dubois kind of summarizes his 2025-26 campaign, thus far. He has only appeared in six games for the Capitals, and not since the Hallowee&#8217;en night game versus the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2025\/11\/04\/nhl-predictions-november-4th-new-york-islanders-vs-boston-bruins\" target=\"_self\">New York Islanders<\/a>. His ice time is way down, compared to what he is accustomed to, at 15:32 a night. His career average is 17:17 for reference. Furthermore, on top of his ice time being down, his production had been non-existent. He was pointless in those six contests. This is after last year having a big year in DC, racking up 66 points in 82 games. He remains a key important to the Capitals rotation upfront. Moreover, in his second last game, a game against the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2025\/10\/28\/dallas-stars-sign-player-big-contract-extension\" target=\"_self\">Dallas Stars<\/a>, he was trending in the right direction. He nearly played 20 minutes that game, and won 11 of 19 faceoffs.<\/p>\n<h3>What Does It Mean for Washington in the Interim<\/h3>\n<p>Luckily, for Washington this is currently their only NHL-level injury worry. Therefore, you&#8217;d like to think they can shuffle things around to help mitigate the impact.<\/p>\n<p>If we look at Dubois&#8217; main line this year, he played with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/w\/wilsoto01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-11-09_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tom Wilson<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/p\/protaal01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-11-09_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aliaksei Protas<\/a> a bunch. In 48 minutes on ice together, they had an <a  href=\"https:\/\/moneypuck.com\/lines.htm\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">expected goals percentage<\/a> of 55.6%. In contrast, it does seem that head coach Spencer Carbery has found a suitable filler. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/m\/mcmicco01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-11-09_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Connor McMichael<\/a> has jumped into Dubois&#8217; slot, and done just fine. In almost 65 minutes with the same duo of wingers, they have a 51.3 xGoals%.<\/p>\n<p>Hopefully Dubois can return in a timely manner, consider the proposed timetable, and get back to his 2024-25 levels.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo Credit: Eric Bolte-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Overall the Washington Capitals are off to an okay start, despite currently sitting seventh in the NHL&#8217;s Metropolitan Division standings. In saying that, defensively they remain a model for other NHL franchises, similar to 2024-25. However, they will now have to deal with a lengthy injury. We have learned, that on Friday one of their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4222,"featured_media":467622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,4547,6671,34,4548],"tags":[289],"class_list":["post-477497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-capitals","category-hockey","category-injuries","category-news","category-nhl","tag-pierre-luc-dubois"],"modified_by":"Levi Pike, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477497"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":477500,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477497\/revisions\/477500"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}