The Washington Capitals will be without shutdown centerman Pierre-Luc Dubois indefinitely due to a lower-body injury.

“Yeah, he’s going to be out for an extended period of time,” Carbery said after practice Monday.

The Capitals do not yet know if Dubois will require surgery.

“We still need to gather more information at this point,” Carbery said, “so I can’t really disclose anything more than that he’s going to be out for an extended period of time.”

Dubois suffered his injury against the New York Islanders on Friday, where his knee appeared to buckle during a defensive-zone faceoff. He needed assistance to get off the ice and did not return for the rest of the 3-1 loss. He missed the team’s following game against the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday night.

Dubois has played in just six of the Capitals’ 12 games this fall. Carbery told reporters Monday that his current ailment is “unrelated” to the lower-body injury that cost him five games earlier in the season.

In the six games he has played this year, Dubois has yet to record a point and is averaging 15:32 of time on ice per game.

Carbery regularly deploys the Quebec-born forward as the Capitals’ primary shutdown center, matching him up with the opposition’s top line. While playing the role last season, Dubois also recorded a career high of 66 points (20g, 46a) in 82 games.

“Yeah, it’s a huge hole,” Carbery said. “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. He’s out now, and now we’ll need other players to step up. We’ll need the entire group to do a little bit more, including the coaching staff. That’s the way that we’ll look at it, and that’s how we’ll approach it.”

The Capitals have been dominant at five-on-five with Dubois on the ice since he arrived in DC ahead of the start of last season. During his minutes, the team has seen 52.9 percent of shot attempts, 54.7 percent of expected goals, 56.1 percent of scoring chances, and 56.3 percent of high-danger chances.

With Dubois out, the Capitals are likely to set up with some combination of Dylan Strome, Connor McMichael, Nic Dowd, Hendrix Lapierre, Justin Sourdif, and Spencer Smallman down the middle. McMichael skated as the second-line center at practice again, lining up between Aliaksei Protas and Tom Wilson.