The Washington Capitals lost center Pierre-Luc Dubois for the majority of the season after he underwent surgery on his abdominal and adductor muscles last week. The absence of one of their top players has thrown the Caps’ lineup into disarray, going 1-2-1 and averaging 2.25 goals per game since Dubois hit the injured list.

Head coach Spencer Carbery has found it particularly hard to craft a productive and reliable middle-six forward group.

While the idea of recalling top prospect names like Ilya Protas or Andrew Cristall from the AHL’s Hershey Bears to see if they can fix the middle-six woes may be enticing, Carbery and the rest of the coaching staff believe the solution to their present problems lies with their current roster.

“We only have a limited amount of roster, so you can only do something with the players that you have here,” Carbery said ahead of the team’s game against the Carolina Hurricanes, Tuesday. “You can’t all of a sudden bring up five guys from the American Hockey League and start inserting guys. We believe that the answers are here.

“Now, how much do you tinker and move things around? You know, Mikey (Connor McMichael) in the middle, where Dubois has played for the last year with Tom Wilson and Pro (Aliaksei Protas). With Dubie last year, a really, really good line for us that carried play, that was able to contribute offensively. Right now, they are a good line, but they’re not scoring at five-on-five. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I know it’s few and far between how many goals they have in the last four games since they’ve been together. I’m assuming it’s one, maybe in four games. So you’re staying with it, but you also know you need some production from that line.”

Carbery was close to on the money with the McMichael, Wilson, and Protas trio, as the three have been on the ice together for just two five-on-five goals in the last four games. Despite that, there are signs that more good is yet to come for the line as the Capitals have controlled 61.6 percent of the expected goals with the three forwards on the ice in those games.

McMichael, who has just four points (1g, 3a) in 15 games this season, is one of the most snakebitten players in the NHL. Per MoneyPuck, the 24-year-old former first-round pick has scored three fewer goals than expected, which is 19th worst in the league and second-worst on the Capitals to only Hendrix Lapierre (-3.1), another of the team’s young middle-six forwards.

The Capitals’ scoring woes are team-wide though, as they ranked 29th out of 32 teams in goals scored above expected coming into this week. The 42 goals they have scored are fifth-worst in the NHL.

“You have to get scoring five-on-five from forward lines. That’s just a fact,” Carbery said. “You have to get production from your first, second, and third line. Fourth line is bonus round, and we got one goal from them last game, get a four-on-four goal, and get zero five-on-five goals from lines one, two, and three. So how do we find solutions to that? We let Mikey try to work through that with that line.

“The third line with Lappy (Hendrix Lapierre), it’s a younger line. I understand the optics of it. Do you move one of the young guys? We’re contemplating all those options, and I’m not sitting here saying it’s perfect or we know exactly what it’s going to look like, but we feel like right now, in the current moment, in how we’re playing, what we’ve seen on film and the analytics, the best decision right now is to stay that way.”

The only lineup change Carbery is making from the Capitals’ loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning this past weekend will be swapping in Declan Chisholm for Trevor van Riemsdyk on defense. In the middle six up front, McMichael will stick with Protas and Wilson, while Justin Sourdif remains at center in between Hendrix Lapierre and Ryan Leonard.

Despite Carbery being committed to more of the same, he also mentioned that the 20-year-old Leonard gives him some mid-game options if things aren’t going as planned. Leonard is fifth among Capitals forwards in scoring with seven points (3g, 4a) in 15 games.

“If we’ve got to move things around, I move Leonard around,” Carbery said. “Because I feel like Leno can give us something, so I can move him with Mikey mid-game. There’s some different things I can move around to try and spark — if we feel like we don’t have enough in that middle six.”

The Capitals will need to find their game against an always-tough Hurricanes team that is controlling a league-high 59.9 percent of the five-on-five shot attempts in their games this season. Carolina is 11-4 to begin the 2025-26 season and have won their last four outings.