Hendrix Lapierre has struggled to see consistent ice time throughout the 2025-26 NHL season. With the Washington Capitals keen on competing for a playoff spot from the outset of the year, little opportunity was present for a player still trying to find his way on the ice early in his professional career.<\/p>\n
Now, with the Capitals\u2019 playoff odds near zero and with\u00a0some extenuating circumstances<\/a>, Lapierre is being given his most consistent opportunity from head coach Spencer Carbery as the season winds down. Carbery spoke Sunday morning about what he\u2019s seeing confidence-wise from the 24-year-old forward after moving him to the wing in the team\u2019s top-six forward group.<\/p>\n \u201cLaps played well, and he\u2019s getting some good opportunity playing in our top six, and he\u2019ll continue to get that,\u201d Carbery said. \u201cHe makes a good play on the goal [against Boston]. They end up being on for the goal against, the first one, but I thought overall, he\u2019s done a good job. His confidence level and his play with the puck, you can see it\u2019s just slowly growing, where he\u2019s willing to hang on to it a little bit more, make a few more plays, not just throw it away. I think he\u2019s done a good job.\u201d<\/p>\n In Saturday\u2019s loss to the Bruins, Lapierre played 12:10 of total ice time, lining up with Pierre-Luc Dubois and Tom Wilson. The game was his third this month in which he received more than 10 minutes of ice time, something he hasn\u2019t done since November (3) and October (8).<\/p>\n Lapierre chipped in one of the assists on Matt Roy\u2019s goal to open the game\u2019s scoring. Lapierre sent an indirect pass off the boards to Rasmus Sandin, who slid the puck over to Roy for a blast from the point that beat Bruins netminder Jeremy Swayman.<\/p>\n The apple was Lapierre\u2019s 10th of the season, and he has now recorded three points (1g, 2a) in his last four games. He has 13 total points (3, 10a) this year.<\/p>\n While Lapierre\u2019s overall playing time has been minimal this year, he has made the most of what he\u2019s been given. During his 526:57 of total five-on-five ice time, the Capitals have seen 56.5 percent of shot attempts, 57.2 percent of expected goals, 58.3 percent of scoring chances, and 60.3 percent of high-danger chances.<\/p>\n The team\u2019s level of success during those minutes has likely kept Lapierre in the club\u2019s plans, despite a 90-game goal drought that he finally ended in late January<\/a>. Carbery spoke about consistently keeping Lapierre in his lineup through those struggles and how the Capitals and the player may now benefit from going through that rough patch.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to say it\u2019s partly our, us as an organization, believing in the player,\u201d Carbery said. The other 50 percent is the player taking advantage of the opportunity and not forcing our hand to say, \u2018You know what, we need to make a change.\u2019 I think he\u2019s done a good job for us for the most part this year, even though the production wasn\u2019t there early in the year. He was playing consistently every night.<\/p>\n \u201cI know the role wasn\u2019t huge and his minutes weren\u2019t significant, but he was in the lineup on a team that\u2019s competing to try to be in the Stanley Cup playoffs. I think he was, even though it may not look like it because of the minutes and the lack of production, he was playing solid in the role that was being asked of him. I think we\u2019re willing to be patient with him, and now given an opportunity, it\u2019s on him to take advantage of playing some more minutes and playing with some of our more offensive players.\u201d<\/p>\n Lapierre has previously shown that he can produce while playing with more offensively gifted linemates, particularly during his stints in the AHL with the Hershey Bears. During the 2024 Calder Cup Playoffs, Lapierre played on Hershey\u2019s dominant first line with Joe Snively and Ethen Frank.<\/p>\n In those 20 playoff games en route to a second straight Bears championship, Lapierre recorded 22 points (7g, 15a). He was the league\u2019s top postseason scorer, with Snively (18) and Frank (17) following him in second and third, and was named playoff MVP<\/a>.<\/p>\n The goal for Lapierre now will be to translate more of that minor-league success to the NHL, especially as he is set to become a restricted free agent this summer. He\u2019ll have just 14 games down the final stretch this season to try and do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hendrix Lapierre has struggled to see consistent ice time throughout the 2025-26 NHL season. With the Washington Capitals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-526213","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\/526213","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=526213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}