The Stars Fly Into a Short-Handed Blue Line: Washington Skated With Five Defensemen Monday Ahead of Tuesday's Game in the Capital

Washington's problem is arithmetic. The Capitals practiced Monday with five defensemen, a day before the Dallas Stars visit Capital One Arena on Tuesday (6 p.m. CT), after Timothy Liljegren took what the team called a maintenance day. The pairs relayed from the ice told the story: Jakob Chychrun with Matt Roy, Cole Hutson with Jack St. Ivany, and Martin Fehervary listed without a partner. Behind them, the reinforcements are not ready — Vincent Desharnais, out since October with an appendix issue that was reported as an absence of up to six weeks, was back around the team watching the end of practice, and Rasmus Sandin is still in a non-contact jersey doing skills work on his way back from ACL surgery, with no return date given for either man.

The timing is unkind. Washington is coming off a 5-1 loss to Minnesota on Sunday, a game in which Chychrun played 27:16 — the kind of minutes a short bench forces on its top defender, and the kind Dallas's top six is built to punish. Whether Liljegren plays Tuesday decides how stretched that blue line really is; if he cannot go, the minutes have to come from somewhere against a Stars team that arrives at 8-5-1, fourth in the Central, and a better road team (3-1-1) than home team (5-4-0) so far.

Dallas brings its own storyline east. The Stars steadied themselves Saturday with a 3-1 win over Columbus after dropping two straight at home, with Jason Robertson at 14 points in 14 games — five goals, nine assists and two game-winners — and Mikko Rantanen at 17 points and seven goals. Over Robertson hangs the file that has followed him all fall: a contract that runs through 2026-27 only, no extension signed, and a $12 million cap hit. None of that skates on Tuesday. What skates is a deep Dallas offense against a defense that, as of Monday's practice, was counting its available bodies on one hand.