The Washington Capitals are finally getting Pierre-Luc Dubois back into their lineup.<\/p>\n
Dubois will play in his first game since October 31 against the Nashville Predators on Thursday night. The 27-year-old centerman has missed 52 total games this season and was previously not expected to return until after the NHL\u2019s break for the 2026 Winter Olympics.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a lot better than knowing I\u2019m going to be watching from upstairs,\u201d Dubois said pregame. \u201cIt\u2019s been a long time, a lot of work. The training staff here did an amazing job. I\u2019m extremely grateful for them, teammates, and everybody. It\u2019s going to be a fun night.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Capitals have an open roster spot to activate PLD off injured reserve after sending Bogdan Trineyev back to the AHL\u2019s Hershey Bears on Wednesday<\/a>. Head coach Spencer Carbery revealed that Dubois will play on a forward line with Aliaksei Protas and Tom Wilson.<\/p>\n \u201c[He missed] a lot of games, so getting his feet back under him, it\u2019s going to take some time,\u201d Carbery said. \u201cThe timing of it, handling the puck, the nerves of it. Getting him back is a positive step, but there\u2019s no ill-conceived notions of him coming in and putting a cape on and saving the world. It\u2019s going to be a process of coming back.\u201d<\/p>\n Dubois\u00a0initially suffered his injury against the New York Islanders on Halloween<\/a>, staying down on the ice after a defensive-zone faceoff. He had played in just six games for the Capitals this season before having surgery on his abdominal and adductor muscles.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was my first time really rehabbing something that wasn\u2019t just day to day or a week or two,\u201d Dubois said. \u201cI learned a lot. When you have a long rehab, there can be a lot of ups and downs. But, like I said, the training staff here did a fantastic job. The doctors who did the surgery did a fantastic job. There weren\u2019t a lot of downs. It was just kind of going up and progressing. Once I got to skating, it just kind of went from there. But, yeah, it\u2019s all because of them.\u201d<\/p>\n The veteran pivot was cleared for contact at practice on January 26<\/a> and has been skating with his teammates for even longer in a light blue no-contact jersey<\/a>. In the games Dubois did play this year, he did not find the scoresheet, recording zero points and averaging 15:32 of ice time per game. He posted a career-high 66 points (20g, 46a) in his first campaign with the Capitals last year.<\/p>\n Thursday\u2019s game against the Predators is the Capitals\u2019 last before the NHL\u2019s Olympics-imposed break. They will not play again until they host the Philadelphia Flyers on February 25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Washington Capitals are finally getting Pierre-Luc Dubois back into their lineup. Dubois will play in his first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-451122","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\/451122","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=451122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}