Capitals’ Connor Brown to miss six to eight months after ACL surgery

Brown suffered the injury back on Oct. 17 in a game against the Vancouver Canucks when defenseman Noah Juulsen checked him into the boards. He needed help off the ice and into the locker room and didn’t put any pressure on his right leg.

Brown’s timeline for recovery would have him returning in late April/early May in a best-case scenario, and that’s assuming that the recovery goes well and the Capitals win a round or two in the playoffs, so there’s a strong chance that Brown is done for the season.

Brown was traded to the Capitals from the Ottawa Senators over the summer in a deal that sent a 2024 second-round pick the other way. He’s in the final year of a three-year contract with a $3.6 million cap hit and is set to become an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season, so just like that, Brown’s time as a Capital may be done.

If this is it for Brown in Washington, it wasn’t an overly memorable time. He’s played just four games for the Capitals so far and failed to register a point in those four games. He was looking to build off of his 2021-22 season, which was one of the better ones in his career, where he set a career-high in assists with 29, along with 10 goals for 39 points in 64 games.

The injury problems seem to keep piling up for the Capitals in the first month of the season. Forwards Nicklas Backstrom, Tom Wilson, and Carl Hagelin have yet to play a game this season and are still out long-term, T.J. Oshie was announced to be out indefinitely on Monday, and star defenseman John Carlson is currently day-to-day as well.

Despite the injuries, the Capitals seem to be floating for now. They’re currently 5-4-1 on the year, good for fifth in the Metropolitan division.