{"id":588977,"date":"2026-04-17T03:19:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T03:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/588977\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T03:19:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T03:19:09","slug":"pierre-luc-dubois-played-with-a-broken-hand-at-the-end-of-the-season-hopes-to-avoid-surgery-just-part-of-the-frustrating-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/588977\/","title":{"rendered":"Pierre-Luc Dubois played with a broken hand at the end of the season, hopes to avoid surgery: \u2018Just part of the frustrating year\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pierre-Luc Dubois<\/a> played through some serious pain at the end of the Washington Capitals\u2019<\/a> 2025-26 season.<\/p>\n

In the team\u2019s 6-3 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins<\/a> last Saturday, Dubois crashed into the boards behind Pittsburgh\u2019s net as he set Ryan Leonard<\/a> up for a goal. He left the game due to injury<\/a>, but then dressed the next night in the Capitals\u2019 home rematch with the Penguins.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got hurt against Pittsburgh in the Saturday game,\u201d Dubois said Thursday. \u201cSo, I\u2019m still recovering from that one. But, yeah, it was a very frustrating year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI fractured my hand, so I\u2019m talking to a doctor tomorrow. So that would be a month-to-two-month thing. Hopefully [no surgery]. I\u2019ll know more tomorrow. But, yeah, just part of the frustrating year.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the Capitals were eliminated from playoff contention, Dubois then sat out in the final game of the season against the Columbus Blue Jackets in favor of Hendrix Lapierre. He seemed to plan to keep playing through the pain if the Caps had been able to extend their season.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I always wondered, you know, because you always see guys that do it, and you\u2019re like, \u2018I wonder if I could do it,’\u201d Dubois said. \u201cIt\u2019s not fun, but it\u2019s that time of year. Everybody\u2019s banged up to a certain extent. It hurt, but I\u2019d do it again if I had to.\u201d<\/p>\n

The end-of-season injury wrapped up what was the most injury-hampered season of the 27-year-old centerman\u2019s career. Dubois underwent surgery to address injuries to his abdominal and adductor muscles on November 7, returning on February 5 after missing 52 games in the first four months of the campaign.<\/p>\n

Dubois ended the year playing in just 29 total games, recording 19 points (5g, 14a). Before this year, he had not played fewer than 73 games in any non-COVID-impacted season.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, individually, it was the first time in my career with a serious injury,\u201d Dubois said. \u201cI missed a lot of time. Mentally, it\u2019s never easy. Being on your couch for a month, skating a little bit, and doing the bare minimum in the gym. It wasn\u2019t easy, but like I said before, the training staff helped a lot, the players, the staff keeping me in the loop as much as possible with what was going on around the team. Watching from up top and not being able to compete out there with the guys for that long was tough. But, yeah, a lot of learning this year for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, Dubois will head into a personally unprecedented offseason as his injury will also keep him off Team Canada at the World Championship, a tournament he has played in four prior times. He still isn\u2019t sure how to make the best of his soon-to-be free time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is the first time in my career that I haven\u2019t made playoffs and not done World Championships, so I don\u2019t even really know,\u201d Dubois said. \u201cI haven\u2019t put too much thought into it. But yeah, the hand injury now, it\u2019s kind of throwing a wrench in that. But yeah, I got a lot of time to think about it. But I need to have a good offseason and all that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2025-26 season was only the third year of Dubois\u2019 eight-year contract. The only Capitals players signed for longer than Dubois, whose deal expires after the 2030-31 season, are Jakob Chychrun<\/a> (through 2032-33) and Martin Fehervary<\/a> (through 2032-33).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pierre-Luc Dubois played through some serious pain at the end of the Washington Capitals\u2019 2025-26 season. In the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-588977","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588977","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=588977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}