The Washington Capitals are going to look very different up front against the Dallas Stars on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
With Dylan Strome temporarily on the shelf with a lower-body injury<\/a>, head coach Spencer Carbery has been forced to tweak all four of his forward lines. The Capitals also recalled Ethen Frank from the AHL\u2019s Hershey Bears on Monday<\/a>, and he will immediately retake his spot in the lineup.<\/p>\n Projected Capitals lineup against the Stars<\/p>\n Leonard<\/p>\n McMichael<\/p>\n Ovechkin<\/p>\n Beauvillier<\/p>\n Lapierre<\/p>\n Frank<\/p>\n Strome\u2019s absence has forced Carbery to pair a new center, Connor McMichael, with Alex Ovechkin. Over the past three seasons, Ovechkin and McMichael have shared the ice at five-on-five for 403:06 of ice time, struggling mightily to provide the Capitals with good minutes. During their shared ice time, the team has seen just 43.1 percent of shot attempts, 38.3 percent of expected goals, 44.8 percent of scoring chances, and 42.5 percent of high-danger chances.<\/p>\n \u201c[Ovechkin] has some tendencies that you need to be aware of and sort of where he likes pucks or where he\u2019s going to be on the ice and communication style and all that sort of stuff,\u201d Carbery said. \u201cMikey, I think, has played with him enough for us to feel comfortable because if you remember, he played quite a bit with him last year. He was playing on the wing, not in the middle, so it changes it a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n Ryan Leonard, who is amid a career-best four-game point streak (2g, 2a), joins the two to complete the line. The three played 2:33 of Saturday night\u2019s game against the Ottawa Senators together, without recording a shot attempt, while the Senators recorded five shots on goal and scored a goal.<\/p>\n The Capitals\u2019 \u201cnew\u201d second line of Aliaksei Protas, Pierre-Luc Dubois, and Tom Wilson is one Carbery went to often last season. The three big forwards were a near-immediate success together, with the Caps owning 56.2 percent of shot attempts, 57.7 percent of expected goals, 56.7 percent of scoring chances, and 53.9 percent of high-danger chances. Wilson is the team\u2019s leading scorer through nine games, posting 11 points (5g, 6a).<\/p>\n Frank, who has two goals in Hershey this year, returned to Capitals practice after his short demotion to the AHL and was slotted on the third line with Hendrix Lapierre and Anthony Beauvillier. Lapierre, after a few games on the wing, returns to his natural center position with Strome out of action. He played his season high in ice time, 11:37, while on the wing against the Columbus Blue Jackets last week.<\/p>\n To complete the trios, Justin Sourdif has been moved back to the wing on the fourth line with Nic Dowd and Brandon Duhaime. The three have skated 46:19 of combined five-on-five ice time through nine games this year.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, we\u2019re just moving some things around,\u201d Carbery said. \u201cAnd with Stromer being out, Mikey moving, felt like putting Sourdif back with Dowd and Dewey trying to get that line going a little bit. We\u2019re looking to accomplish a few things. It all goes back to just trying to find some combinations that can get rolling a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n On defense, with Rasmus Sandin still out, Declan Chisholm has been moved back on the third pairing with Trevor van Riemsdyk after Dylan McIlrath was given a sweater against the Senators. McIlrath skated with Sonny Milano on the club\u2019s extra defense pairing.<\/p>\n The Capitals\u2019 trip to Dallas is part of a quick, one-game road trip. After an uneven start to the season, the Stars have won two games in a row, beating the Carolina Hurricanes and Nashville Predators last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Washington Capitals are going to look very different up front against the Dallas Stars on Tuesday night.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-255341","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\/255341","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=255341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}