ARLINGTON, VA — Pierre-Luc Dubois will play for the first time since Halloween on Thursday night, returning from a 47-game absence after undergoing surgery to his abdominal and abductor muscles.
While Dubois has been skating for over a month, head coach Spencer Carbery previously indicated he would be out of the lineup through the Olympics, telling reporters in January to wait until after the Games to ask about his timeline. But with Dubois recovering ahead of schedule, the team opted to get him some ice time on Thursday rather than holding him out through the 19-day break.
Carbery explained the decision after Thursday’s morning skate: with his first game back already out of the way, Dubois will be better prepared to play after the break.
“Number one is, he’s ready. So that’s number one box,” Carbery said. “Why not give him an extra three weeks? Which is where my head went to as well. The reason why is to get him into a game — if he’s ready, get him into one game. He’s got three weeks or two weeks (off after that). He can come back. He’s got over that obstacle, or that first game under his belt, and then he can use the break. He has some plans to utilize that and then get back to practices when we return.”
Dubois will return to his role centering Tom Wilson and Aliaksei Protas on Thursday, though Carbery noted he expected an adjustment period before Dubois was back to 100%.
“There’s no ill-conceived notions of him coming in and putting a cape on and saving the world,” he said. “It’s going to be a process of coming back.”
If he can return to form, however, Dubois could be a much-needed boost for a Capitals team fighting to make the playoffs. The Caps currently sit four points behind the New York Islanders for third place in the Metropolitan Division and are six points behind the Boston Bruins for a wild-card spot. They’ll have 23 games left between the break and the end of the regular season.
“We’re going to need to come out of the break and be hot as a pistol,” Carbery said Thursday. “And so that’s not only as a team, but individually, guys are going to have to come out of that break playing at a really, really high level individually.”
NHL teams will resume practices on February 17 for players not competing at the Olympics, allowing Dubois more time to get back up to speed. He hopes the extended break will help level the playing field as he adjusts to his return.
“My goal is, I’m going to skate during the break,” Dubois said Thursday. “My goal is that when everybody comes back a little rusty and having beers on the beach, they’ll be a little rusty, I’ll be extremely rusty, but we’ll have some rust to everybody. So that was the goal, and now that I get to play this one game before the break, that’ll help a lot.”
Not only did Dubois miss more than half the season, but he’d played just six games beforehand, starting the season injured and never fully recovering before New York Islanders center Jean-Gabriel Pageau fell on him during a faceoff.
“It’s just one of those things where it’s the perfect storm, where I was already hurt there and then he falls right where I’m hurt and everything kind of just collapses,” Dubois said. “So it’ll be good to be back 100%.”
Dubois knows that, with so few games under his belt before the injury, he’ll have plenty of rust to shake off to get back to his top form, making the break even more vital.
“I’ve got a pretty good idea, everything I have to work on,” he said. “Timing, execution, you know, obviously my cardio, my hands, all these things. As the season goes on, the game progresses. It gets faster and faster. You get out of that offseason training mode and into the game.
“So obviously game six, when I played, to game 59 tonight would be a huge difference. But, you know, these teammates here and the staff, they helped me a lot. I’m sure that I can learn a lot and take that break to really hone it in and those team practices to really get as close as I can. Hopefully it’s not a lot of games until I’m back to 100%.”
