Lars Eller will re-debut with the Washington Capitals on Friday night.
Head coach Spencer Carbery confirmed that the 35-year-old Danish center will be in the team’s lineup on the road against the Colorado Avalanche. Eller will swap in for Hendrix Lapierre down the middle.
“We’ll ease him in,” Carbery said pregame. “He’s going to start in that third-line hole at the center position. Special teams, we’ll see how it goes. Like I said yesterday, I think just him and the stability he brings, the veteran experience, the presence to give us a reliable guy in the middle there that can make all the reads, all the decisions. He’s strong on the puck; he’s great in the faceoff dot. So, we’ll ease him into the mix and get him as acclimated as we can as we move along.”
Eller skated 16:25 of ice time per game in 17 games for the Pittsburgh Penguins before being dealt to Washington earlier this week. He recorded seven points (4g, 3a) and won 56 percent of his faceoffs.
The Penguins also deployed him as one of their primary penalty killers, giving him 2:08 of shorthanded ice time per game, which was third most among the club’s forwards. Carbery was asked if he thought Eller would have any trouble adapting to how the Capitals kill penalties now under assistant coach Scott Allen.
“He’ll be fine. He’s a veteran,” Carbery said. “He’s played under a bunch of different coaches, a bunch of different systems, whether it’s special teams or five-on-five. We’re not going to overwhelm him early. We want to make sure that he gets acclimated into the group, and whether he’s taking that left-side draw over on that left dot or we use Dowder, we’ll work our way through that. We just want to make sure that we’re respectful of the fact that we’ve got to ease him into all these situations five-on-five and special teams.”
Eller will likely line up with Jakub Vrana and Andrew Mangiapane on the Capitals’ third line. He will have built-in comfortability with Vrana, as the two skated together regularly in their prior stints with Washington.
The veteran pivot’s first game back with the Capitals will come against the Avalanche, the team that the Caps traded him to at the 2023 Trade Deadline. In 24 games for Colorado, Eller recorded seven points (3g, 4a). He then went without a point in seven playoff games.
