suffering a lower-body injury against the New York Rangers on Sunday<\/a>. Dubois, 27, left the ice at Madison Square Garden with 6:44 remaining in the third period, and head coach Spencer Carbery ruled the big centerman out for Tuesday night\u2019s game after he did not participate in the club\u2019s morning skate.<\/p>\n\u201cHe won\u2019t play tonight, and I would call him day to day,\u201d Carbery said.<\/p>\n
Asked about the nature of Dubois\u2019 ailment, Carbery waffled before cautiously declaring it a lower-body injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cUh, lower, let\u2019s go with,\u201d he said. \u201cI would say lower body.\u201d<\/p>\n
The injury to Dubois means Hendrix Lapierre will draw straight back into the Capitals\u2019 lineup after sitting out healthy against the Rangers. Connor McMichael will remain down the middle, moving up to the second line.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, hopefully it\u2019s not too serious,\u201d Wilson said of his frequent linemate on Tuesday. \u201cDubie\u2019s a horse for us. He plays both sides of the puck, plays a lot of minutes, power play, PK, everything. So he\u2019s a guy that\u2019s tough to replace, but we got pretty good depth on our roster, and be the next guy up and take on a little bit more responsibility and get the job done.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s so many good players that there\u2019s a lot of chemistry with different guys, which is definitely a good thing to have in your toolbox. So, you know, when a guy does get hurt, you\u2019re comfortable playing with some of the other guys that might fill into that spot. So hopefully it makes the transition a little easier.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carbery regularly deploys Dubois against the opposition\u2019s top offensive forwards, a duty he says will have to be more of a shared responsibility against Lightning players like Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, and Jake Guentzel.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe handle them very carefully,\u201d Carbery said. \u201cWe\u2019ll look at probably by committee, but I\u2019m sure they\u2019ll get a heavy dose of Pro and Mikey. We\u2019re going to have to do a job. We all know the strengths of Tampa\u2019s lineup, especially with those five forwards. So that\u2019s where it starts.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to be able to limit what they\u2019re able to do because they have the ability to absolutely take over a game, and you don\u2019t have a shot. If they have one of their nights that they have frequently with any of those two lines, it\u2019s hard to get a result against them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dubois, who didn\u2019t miss a single game for the Capitals last year, is averaging 17:22 of ice time this season, playing at all three strengths. With him not available for power-play practice reps, Sonny Milano was moved up onto the team\u2019s first unit. Milano played in his first game of the season against the Rangers, receiving 10:07 of ice time in the 1-0 victory.<\/p>\n
With Dubois out, the Capitals are currently carrying no extra forwards. Carbery did not mention any plans to recall anyone from the AHL\u2019s Hershey Bears.<\/p>\n
Puck drop against the Lightning is set for 7 pm. The Capitals will then have two days of practice before hosting the Minnesota Wild on Friday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Washington Capitals will be without an integral part of their lineup when they take on the Tampa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-224474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}