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Capitals Recall Bogdan Trineyev, Place Nic Dowd On IR

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The Washington Capitals have awarded one of their top AHL scorers with the first NHL call-up of his career. Winger Bogdan Trineyev has been recalled after recording six points and 15 shots on goal in the Hershey Bears’ last six games. Trineyev is up to 12 points in 15 games this season, second-most on the team.

Washington has placed Nic Dowd on injured reserve, retroactive to his last game on November 17th, to create the roster space for Trineyev’s recall. Dowd has missed the last four games with an upper-body injury. He appears to be headed for a fifth absence, after being dubbed a game-time decision for Wednesday’s match against the Winnipeg Jets, the same designation he carried for Monday’s game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, per Sammi Silber of The Hockey News in her newsletter, DCBackcheck.

Trineyev is expected to be listed as Washington’s extra forward on Wednesday. The Capitals will stick with Sonny Milano and Ethen Frank on their fourth-line wings. That duo has been red-hot as of late, with three points and five points over the last three games respectively.

A chance to be close with the NHL lineup will still be a nice reward for Trineyev, who seems to be amid his first true breakout in North America. He has held up near point-per-game scoring through the early season after posting seven points in eight games of last year’s Calder Cup Playoffs. Trineyev had previously only scored 42 points in 149 AHL games, riding a slow climb through Hershey’s lineup that was marked by incremental improvements. Trineyev played in 53 games in Russia’s KHL before moving over to the AHL full-time in 2023. He scored 13 points in his final 39 KHL games, his only scoring in the league.

Trineyev is a strong, skilled power-forward, standing at 6-foot-3 and 205 pounds. He has a hard shot and soft hands – and has grown his ability to get involved in play significantly over his first two full AHL seasons. Washington will now recognize that growth by providing the 23-year-old a chance to learn from NHL veterans.

Dowd To Miss A Third Game With Upper-Body Injury

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  • Capitals center Nic Dowd was a full participant in practice today but will miss his third straight game tonight, relays Sammi Silber of The Hockey News. The 35-year-old has missed the last two contests due to an upper-body injury.  Dowd has a goal and four assists in 19 games so far this season while logging over 15 minutes per night of playing time.  Sonny Milano has played the last two games in Dowd’s absence and is expected to stay in the lineup for their game tonight against Tampa Bay.

Upper-Body Injury For Dowd

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  • Capitals center Nic Dowd missed tonight’s game against Edmonton due to an upper-body injury, relays NHL.com’s Tom Gulitti (Twitter link). The 35-year-old is in the first season of a two-year, $6MM deal but has struggled offensively.  After notching double-digit goals in each of the last five years, Dowd has just one through his first 19 outings.  Bailey Johnson of The Washington Post adds (Twitter link) that the middleman won’t accompany the team to Montreal for their game on Thursday and will be evaluated further.

John Carlson Out With Upper-Body Injury

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  • On the flip side of New Jersey’s game tonight, the Washington Capitals are playing without their longest-tenured defenseman. Before the game, Bailey Johnson of the Washington Post reported that blueliner John Carlson is dealing with an upper-body injury, and he didn’t participate in tonight’s contest. Fortunately, there’s no indication it’s expected to be a long-term issue for Carlson, who could return to the action in the Capitals’ next game.

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Capitals Name Patrick Wellar Assistant Coach

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Nov. 12: Wellar has had his interim tag removed, per Johnson. He replaces Love, who was fired following a one-year suspension by the league in reference to allegations of domestic abuse.

Sep. 27: The Capitals have promoted Patrick Wellar to their NHL coaching staff on an interim basis, Bailey Johnson of The Washington Post reports. It will be his first NHL role after spending the past several years working as an assistant for Washington’s AHL affiliate in Hershey.

Wellar will ensure the Capitals maintain a four-person bench staff to begin the campaign. Assistant Mitch Love, who primarily works with the team’s defensemen, was placed on leave two weeks ago pending the results of a league investigation into an off-ice incident involving his personal conduct that predated his time with the organization.

The 41-year-old Wellar will now do the same, Johnson said. While going out of one’s way to name an interim head coach during a short-term absence isn’t uncommon, uprooting an assistant from an AHL affiliate is an indication that the club doesn’t expect Love to return anytime soon.

Wellar is entering his eighth year in the organization, all of which have been spent in his everyday assistant role with Hershey. In doing so, he’s been a part of one of the best-run development ladders in the league regarding team success. The Bears won back-to-back Calder Cups in 2023 and 2024 and haven’t finished the regular season with a sub-.500 record during his tenure.

The Saskatchewan native also spent six years of his playing career in the Caps organization with AHL Hershey and ECHL South Carolina from 2008-14. He won a Calder Cup while on Hershey’s blue line in 2010, appearing in all 21 postseason games alongside future NHL fixtures John Carlson, Jay Beagle, Karl Alzner, and Mathieu Perreault.

According to Johnson, the Caps have also named a replacement for the replacement. Veteran coach Brent Thompson – the father of Sabres star Tage Thompson – will step in to cover Wellar’s responsibilities with Hershey. The 54-year-old is a former ECHL Coach of the Year and spent 10 years as the bench boss for AHL Bridgeport in the Islanders organization in two separate stints between 2011 and 2023. He spent the past two seasons as an assistant under Greg Cronin in Anaheim but was not retained by the Ducks for the 2025-26 season.

Capitals’ Pierre-Luc Dubois Undergoes Surgery, Out 3-4 Months

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11/09/25: The Washington Capitals announced today that Dubois underwent surgery on Friday in order “to address injuries to his abdominal and adductor muscles.” The Capitals added that Dubois is “expected to miss 3-4 months” as he recovers.

While it had been announced previously that Dubois would miss an “extended period” due to the injury, today’s announcement provides clarity on the nature of Dubois’ injury and a timeline for his return.

Dubois is a key contributor in Washington, and losing him for such a significant amount of time will likely damage the Capitals’ efforts to push for a playoff spot in a competitive, deep Eastern Conference. In four games since Dubois’ injury, the Capitals have gone 1-2-1.

In Dubois’ absence, Washington has shifted McMichael back to center and had him take Dubois’ spot as the team’s second-line pivot. After breaking out last season and scoring 26 goals and 57 points, McMichael is down to just four points through 15 games this year, and just one point since moving to the 2C role.

The other two centers playing behind first-liner Dylan Strome in Washington’s lineup, Hendrix Lapierre and Nic Dowd, have a combined six points this season.

If the Capitals’ centers behind Strome continue to struggle to produce offensively, Dubois’ injury could place Washington firmly in the market for an external center addition. The list of teams looking to acquire a capable NHL center is far more crowded than the list of teams with a quality NHL pivot they’re willing to trade, and this injury to Dubois may only further complicate that trade market.

11/03/25:The Washington Capitals have received bad news on center Pierre-Luc Dubois’ lower-body injury. He will be out for an “extended period”, head coach Spencer Carbery told The Washington Post’s Bailey Johnson. The Capitals are continuing to evaluate the injury and aren’t yet sure if Dubois will need surgery, per Johnson.

Dubois’ knee buckled on a defensive-zone faceoff in Friday night’s loss to the New York Islanders. He needed assistance getting off the ice. No specifics have been revealed about Dubois’ injury, though Carbery did note that it is unrelated to the lower-body injury that forced Dubois out of five games earlier in the season. The 27-year-old was making his return from that prior injury on Friday, but only managed six minutes back in the lineup before going down again.

Dubois has only been in the lineup for five full games this season. He is still searching for his first point of the season, currently sitting with just nine shots on goal and six hits to his name. Dubois was a core piece of Washington’s offense last season. He reached 20 goals and 66 points while filling the second-line center role for all 82 games. That scoring tied Dubois with Aliaksei Protas for third on the team in scoring, though Protas managed 30 goals and only played 76 games. Dubois centered Connor McMichael and Tom Wilson, who both posted career-highs in scoring.

Last season marked a phenomenal start to Dubois’ time in Washington. He finished the year with a plus-27, an incredible surge after recording a negative plus-minus in four of the prior five seasons. He had previously reached solid scoring marks, though, achieving four 20-goal seasons and three 60-point seasons prior to 2024-25. Those performances spanned a tenure with the Columbus Blue Jackets and Winnipeg Jets, though Dubois has seemed to find his firmest roots in the Capitals organization. He’s a pillar of the offense when healthy, and should return to a top-six role on the other side of this indefinite injury.

Capitals Activate Ethen Frank, Assign Spencer Smallman To AHL

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The Capitals have made a pair of roster moves heading into tonight’s game against Tampa Bay.  The team announced that they have activated winger Ethen Frank off injured reserve.  To make room on the roster, forward Spencer Smallman has been sent back to AHL Hershey.

Frank didn’t make Washington’s roster out of training camp but was recalled less than two weeks into the season.  However, the 27-year-old sustained an upper-body injury in his third game of the year, landing on IR soon after.  Frank has an assist in those three outings to go along with four goals and three assists in 24 games with the Caps last season in his first taste of NHL action.  He also had two goals and three helpers with the Bears prior to his recall.

As for Smallman, the 29-year-old received the first recall of his career last weekend.  However, he will have to continue to wait to make his NHL debut as he was the reserve forward for Washington while on recall.  Smallman had two goals and an assist in six outings with Hershey before the recall and has ranged between 21 and 34 points in his last four minor league campaigns.

With these roster moves, Washington’s active roster remains at the maximum of 23 players.

Antoine Keller Signs Two-Year Deal In Switzerland

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  • Capitals goalie prospect Antoine Keller has terminated his minor league deal with Washington to head back overseas. HC Ajoie in Switzerland announced that they’ve signed the 21-year-old to a two-year contract.  Keller was a seventh-round pick by Washington back in 2023 and spent last season in the NL, albeit in a backup role with Lausanne where he only played in 13 games.  Keller was also on France’s roster at the most recent Worlds and could be part of their group for the upcoming Olympics as well.  Washington has until June 1, 2027 to sign Keller to an entry-level deal or they will lose his rights.

Capitals To Activate Rasmus Sandin From Injured Reserve

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The Capitals will activate defenseman Rasmus Sandin from injured reserve before tonight’s game against the Blues, head coach Spencer Carbery told reporters (including Bailey Johnson of The Washington Post). They quietly placed center Pierre-Luc Dubois on IR in the corresponding move after receiving word he’ll be out for several weeks.

Sandin hasn’t played since Oct. 21 due to an upper-body injury, missing five games. He’s been skating in a non-contact jersey for over a week now, so conditioning shouldn’t be much of an issue.

Before the absence, Sandin was off to a fine start. His offensive production was a bit lacking through seven games, logging only two assists after hitting 30 points in 82 games last year. However, he supplemented that with a +3 rating and has been increasingly active with the puck on his stick. His 3.14 shot attempts per game stand as a career high, and he also demonstrated a bit more physicality than usual, with 16 hits. Overall, he’s been a bit more involved in the play than he was last year, despite only a marginal increase in average ice time from 19:11 to 19:24 per game.

The 25-year-old is in the early stages of his third full season with Washington after being acquired from the Maple Leafs near the 2023 trade deadline. He’s seen his ice time slightly reduced during his tenure, as the club has added other notable names like Jakob Chychrun via trade and Matt Roy via free agency. However, he still plays a critical support role and could see his usage increase after this season if pending unrestricted free agent John Carlson doesn’t return. While regarded as an offensive-minded blue liner, he’s been paired with Roy at even strength this season and used in a primarily defensive capacity. The duo has only allowed one goal against in 76 minutes of 5-on-5 play, but has also only been on the ice for one goal for during that time.

Chychrun slotted in next to Roy in Sandin’s absence, and that duo fared better, both in actual goals share (60%) and expected goals share (64.6%), per MoneyPuck. They’re keeping that duo together and bumping Sandin down to third-pairing deployment with Trevor van Riemsdyk as a result, according to Tom Gulitti of NHL.com. Sandin will still quarterback Washington’s second power play unit.

Capitals Promote Tim Barnes To Assistant General Manager

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The Washington Capitals have promoted Tim Barnes to an Assistant General Manager position. He had previously served as the team’s Director of Analytics since the 2017-18 season, and filled an analyst role from 2014 to 2017.

Barnes graduated from the University of Calgary in 1989 and worked in the oil and gas, petrochemical, and financial industries. Throughout those jobs, he became one of the hockey world’s earliest analytics-bloggers, covering early advanced statistics under the pseudonym ’Vic Ferrari’. Barnes covered an array of topics, but most notably invented the statistics of ’Corsi’ and ’Fenwick’ – which track shot attempts on net. Both values count all goals, shots on goal, and missed shots – though Corsi also tracks blocked shots.

The invention of Barnes’ two stats was, in many ways, the precipice of hockey analytics as they’re seen today. It brought shrewd attention towards the importance of generating shots, and dangerous scoring chances, that would eventually, directly lead to the creation of expected-goal models. Barnes’ website ’timeonice.com’, now defunct, was also a main contributor in the advent of league-wide, advanced analytics tracking in the 2007-08 season.

To the world of hockey statisticians, Barnes’ hire in Washington was cause for celebration in 2014. That excitement will follow him as he takes yet another step up the org chart. He will become one of three assistant general managers in the Capitals organization, alongside Ross Mahoney and Don Fishman. Barnes will undoutbedly handle statistical oversight, while Mahoney handles Washington’s drafting and Fishman handles roster management. The three align with general manager Chris Patrick, who worked to the top chair himself after three years as an assistant GM.

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