The Washington Capitals opened up their 2025 Training Camp on Thursday at MedStar Capitals Iceplex with skate tests and their first practice session of the season. Head coach Spencer Carbery separated players into three groups to start camp, but his initial lineup plans can still be deduced through the multiple line rushes.
Three of the four lines Carbery seems to be assembling are brand new, skating together as a unit for the first time. The final is a combination that spent much of the latter part of last season together, particularly excelling in the playoffs.
Projected Capitals lineup
Based on the first day of 2025 Training Camp
Ovechkin
Strome
Beauvillier
Miroshnichenko
McMichael
Wilson
Alex Ovechkin didn’t take any rushes with Dylan Strome and Anthony Beauvillier as he left the skate early due to a lower-body injury. (Note: Terik Parascak filled in as his placeholder.) The top trio was put together by Carbery at the end of the regular season and persisted into the postseason.
In a 59:45 time on ice playoff sample size, the line showed flashes of being a potential play driver, seeing 55 percent of shot attempts, 54.3 percent of scoring chances, and 53.3 percent of high-danger chances. Ovechkin and Strome have been near inseparable for the past three years, outscoring the opposition 88-82 in over 1,700 minutes shared on the ice together.
Beauvillier, a trade deadline acquisition who was re-signed to a two-year contract this summer, finished third on the team in playoff scoring with six points (2g, 4a) in 10 games.
Pierre-Luc Dubois and Aliaksei Protas played 463 five-on-five minutes together last season and were one of the best center-wing combinations in the league. With the two on the ice, the Capitals collected 55.2 percent of shot attempts, 54.5 percent of expected goals, 56.3 percent of scoring chances, and 54.9 percent of high-danger chances.
While Connor McMichael often joined them to complete their line, Ryan Leonard will get the job for the time being. Leonard never joined the two on the ice for a meaningful sample last season, getting into the first 17 games of his NHL career across the final weeks of the regular season and playoffs.
McMichael, moved down the middle to start the year, has been matched with Tom Wilson and young forward Ivan Miroshnichenko. Carbery was asked to comment specifically about the de facto “third-line” combination during his first media availability of the season.
“We’re a committee – this is not a one-line team,” Carbery said. “[We don’t] ride the coattails of four players that are 100-point guys. We are a team in every sense of the word, so we’re going to utilize first, second, third, fourth
. If you want to number it, I completely understand, because that’s how it potentially will show up, but everybody here knows the value and how much Tom Wilson is going to play and Connor McMichael.
“That’ll be my job, deployment-wise, of how to get them the minutes that they need and how to put them in the best position possible to have success. But we should be a committee when it comes to being productive.”
Miroshnichenko is looking to stick in the NHL for the first time in his career after playing 39 games for the Capitals over the past two seasons. He led the AHL’s Hershey Bears with 23 goals last year, increasing his output by 14 markers from the year prior.
On the fourth line, the dependable duo of Nic Dowd and Brandon Duhaime is joined by one of the very few offseason additions made by general manager Chris Patrick, young forward Justin Sourdif. The Capitals acquired the 23-year-old winger from the Florida Panthers in June, and he has only played in four career NHL games.
The Capitals’ defense pairings appear likely to include the same personnel as they did for the balance of the 2024-25 regular season, but with a slight tweak in how they’ve been paired together. Martin Fehervary missed the entirety of the playoffs after having knee surgery, but has been placed back on the top pairing next to alternate captain John Carlson.
Fehervary primarily lined up with Matt Roy last season, playing a shutdown role that for now seems like it will belong to Rasmus Sandin. The Slovak blueliner’s return also forces Jakob Chychrun back down to the third pair with Trevor van Riemsdyk, where Chychrun had a boatload of offensive success in a career-best campaign.
Carbery will get his first chance to test his players out when the Capitals travel for their first preseason game against the Boston Bruins on Sunday.
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