Oct. 28 vs. Dallas Stars at American Airlines Arena

Time: 8:30 p.m.

TV: ESPN

Radio: 106.7 THE FAN/Caps Radio Network

Washington Capitals (6-3-0)
Dallas Stars (3-3-1)

The Caps take to the road again for the final time in October, venturing outside the Eastern Time Zone for the first time this season when they face the Stars in Dallas on Tuesday night. Washington has won three straight road games at the outset of the season for the first time since 2015-16, when it won each of its first four games on the road.

Tuesday night in Dallas, the Caps will aim to match that feat in a building and a city that has traditionally been a tough environment for them; the Capitals are 7-15-2 all-time in Texas, since the Stars moved south from Minnesota for the 1993-94 season. And the Caps seek to extend that streak without two of their key players, both of whom played in all 82 games for Washington last season.

Defenseman Rasmus Sandin missed Washington’s weekend set of back-to-back games with an upper body injury. When the Caps conducted their Monday morning practice prior to their departure for the Lone Star State, Sandin was in a baby blue non-contact sweater. He won’t make the trip to Dallas.

Also staying behind in DC is center Dylan Strome, who left Saturday’s game with Ottawa after suffering a lower body injury when he became entangled with teammate Jakob Chychrun behind the Senators’ net.

Strome’s injury occurred early in the first period of Saturday’s game with the Sens. After being helped off the ice, he came back midway through the initial frame, taking a few tentative twirls around the ice during a television timeout. He took one full shift (57 seconds) and one brief one (eight seconds) before retiring for the evening.

Since joining the Capitals in 2022-23, Strome has missed just one game; he was a healthy scratch midway through his first season with Washington, shortly after both Nicklas Backstrom and Tom Wilson came off injured reserve simultaneously at the midpoint of that campaign. Both Backstrom and Wilson had missed the front half of the season while rehabbing from offseason surgeries.

Caps coach Spencer Carbery is heartened by the fact that Strome was able to come back on the ice and try to play after initially suffering the injury. Carbery termed Strome as “day-to-day.”

“You’re always concerned when someone goes into the boards,” says Carbery. “I guess it wasn’t really a collision, but going into the boards awkwardly, you’re always a little bit concerned. But him coming back out to try it, I would say I was then optimistic. Because if he doesn’t come back at all, that means it’s pretty significant.

“So him coming back to try it and going through a shift after that I would say made me feel a little bit more positive about where he was at.”

With Strome out of the picture for at least the Dallas game, Caps captain Alex Ovechkin is without his most frequent center for the last three-plus seasons as he seeks the goal that will make him the NHL’s first 900-goal scorer ever.

Since Strome’s arrival in Washington in 2022-23, Ovechkin has logged just under 3,300 minutes at even strength, and 57.7 percent of that time has been spent with Strome on his line. Across a much smaller sample size of just 114:14 Ovechkin has played at evens through the season’s first nine games, that share of the ice at even strength with Strome is significantly larger, at 80.5 percent.

Connor McMichael has played a fair amount with Ovechkin over the years, but not so much from the middle of the ice. Typically, when the two have been on a line together, they’ve occupied the wings of the line. Playing with the game’s all-time goal-scoring leader is a unique situation. At Monday’s practice, McMichael manned the middle of a line with Ovechkin and Ryan Leonard.

“It is different,” says Carbery. “And so there are, and I wouldn’t necessarily characterize them as challenges; I would characterize them as nuances and differences that are very similar to playing with any other winger. But [Ovechkin] has some tendencies that you need to be aware of, [such as] where he likes pucks, where he is going to be on the ice, and communication style and all that sort of stuff.

“Mikey has played with him enough for us to feel comfortable. If you remember, he played quite a bit with him last year; he was playing on the wing, not in the middle, so it changes it a little bit.”

Over the first nine games of the season, McMichael and Ovechkin have shared the ice for just under 27 minutes at even strength. Across the previous three seasons – coinciding with Strome’s time in Washington – McMichael and Ovechkin have been on the ice together for just under 14 percent of Ovechkin’s even strength ice time.

“It’s a little bit different than playing with anyone else,” says McMichael. “He is a unique player, obviously. He’s one of the greatest to ever do it, and you just have to adapt to the way he plays a little bit, because you know he is going to be waiting in the weeds, waiting to unleash that one-timer.

“It’s just little things. I think me and Lenny are going to have to work a little cycle game, and you always know that O is going to find ways of getting open. I think it’s more so just running little plays with each other and then looking for a shot. And if it’s not there, then you know O is open somewhere. And honestly, just talking with Stromer over the years and all that fun stuff, he says you can’t change how you play too much. It’s just little, tiny details.”

Washington made a pair of transactions on Monday morning prior to departing for Dallas. Less than 48 hours after loaning him to AHL Hershey, the Caps summoned winger Ethen Frank from that same club. Frank played quite well in Washington’s Friday night win over the Blue Jackets in Columbus, but when P-L Dubois rejoined the Caps’ lineup on Saturday against Ottawa, Frank was sent to Hershey.

The Caps also announced that they’ve signed forward Brett Leason to a one-year, two-way contract that will pay him $775,000 at the NHL level and $250,000 at the AHL level. Leason was a second-round draft choice (56th overall) of the Capitals in the 2019 NHL Draft, and he spent three seasons in the Washington organization, making his NHL debut with the Caps just under four years ago, on Oct. 29, 2021. He scored his first NHL goal three nights later in his second game, against the Lightning in Tampa.

Just over three years ago, Leason was claimed off waivers from Washington by the Anaheim Ducks, and he spent the last three seasons there. Leason has 220 NHL games under his belt, and he has totaled 25 goals, 29 assists and 54 points along with 54 PIM. The 26-year-old Calgary native gives the Caps another experienced NHL hand in the organization, helping to mitigate the loss of winger Sheldon Rempal, who opted to return to the KHL after signing with the Capitals last summer.

Leason was placed on waivers for the purpose of loaning him to AHL Hershey.

Early in the first season of Glen Gulutzan’s second tour of duty as the Dallas bench boss, the Stars have had some ups and downs. Dallas won three straight games out of the starting gate, but followed by dropping four straight (0-3-1), with three of the losses coming on home ice. The Stars enter Tuesday’s game – their third in four nights – after a sweep of a weekend set of back-to-backs by identical 3-2 scores.

With Jake Oettinger in net on Saturday night in Dallas, the Stars dug their way out of a 2-0 first-period deficit, downing the Carolina Hurricanes on the strength of Miro Heiskanen’s first two goals of the season. Oettinger made 32 saves to help the Stars stop a three-game home skid (0-2-1).

A night later in Nashville, Dallas authored another comeback from a 2-0 deficit, with Mikko Rantanen supplying the game-winner on a Stars power play midway through the third period. Casey DeSmith picked up his first victory of the season in Sunday’s win over the Predators, making 23 saves