Washington Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery revealed Sunday that the team will be without its highly talented rookie winger, Ryan Leonard, for an extended period. Leonard’s long-term absence stems from a blindside, high hit from Anaheim Ducks defenseman Jacob Trouba in the Capitals’ 4-3 shootout loss this past week.

While the full health ramifications for Leonard have not been disclosed, the 20-year-old forward took a massive blow to the head, chest, and arm from Trouba while in an unsuspecting and vulnerable position behind Anaheim’s net. Carbery questioned the play after the game and on Sunday, expressed his further belief that the NHL needs to change how it polices those specific types of hits.

“Like I said the other night, I don’t like the hit,” Carbery said. “I understand the league’s stance and the refs’ stance on the hit. I just — to me, we have to do something as a league. I don’t know where this goes, if anything — it’s just the head contact is the key, right? That’s the key to all of this, is the head contact, and whether he’s low, and he’s in a very, very vulnerable spot.”

Outside of the head contact, which the league likely deemed legal because it was ruled to occur after initial contact with the body, Carbery’s primary concern with the play was that Trouba took advantage of Leonard already being involved in a battle with a different Ducks player at the time of the hit.

The veteran defender, partially obscured by his own net, left his own coverage to throw the hit on Leonard. Carbery insinuates that plays like that could happen much more often in every game if the league doesn’t crack down on them.

“You can look through the years at certain hits like this,” Carbery said. “When guys could hunt guys all over the ice. When you’re engaged, a majority of the time, when you’re wheeling the net, and you’ve got a defender on you and a forward’s walking up the half wall — happens a lot in games — and you’re about to pass it to the D, that winger can leave his coverage. His coverage is the D-man in most D-zone coverage. He can leave his coverage and go and hunt that puck that’s engaged, and he can blow him up every single time.

“Now, you’ve got to be careful with that if you make contact, but you could do it. And it used to happen a lot more frequently, especially when there was more physicality in the game, more guys that weren’t as concerned with the puck in their shifts. So that’s the part that I don’t like. It looks old-school to me, of hunting a player who’s in a vulnerable spot. But I understand the league’s perspective on it and the actual hit itself.”

Trouba, who avoided any supplemental discipline for the Leonard hit, has a lengthy history of dangerous plays, particularly connecting with his elbow to opponents’ heads. He has been fined four times during his career and suspended twice, most recently for two games during the 2024-25 season after elbowing Golden Knights forward Pavel Dorofeyev in the head.

Before that, he was fined $5,000 for elbowing Florida’s Evan Rodrigues in the head during the 2024 playoffs, forced Washington’s Sonny Milano out of action for months with another borderline high hit earlier that season, injured Sidney Crosby with a headshot during the 2022 postseason, and was suspended two games in 2017 for elbowing Mark Stone in the head.

Trouba has also had multiple other “near misses” that likely would have led to injury had a player not avoided contact.

Many of Trouba’s most controversial hits, like his one on Leonard, have avoided more severe consequences or been deemed legal by the NHL, which has drawn considerable scorn from players and coaches in the past. After Trouba escaped with just a fine for his hit on Rodrigues in 2024, Panthers head coach Paul Maurice sarcastically responded in the media that Trouba would likely not be able to eat after suffering such a financial loss.

“Take the hat, pass it around,” Maurice said then, suggesting they collect donations. “Poor lad. Poor Jake.”

Montreal Canadiens forward Brendan Gallagher was more straightforward with his criticism after a high Trouba hit injured Canadiens defenseman Justin Barron last year.

“They had a clean hit on the ice, we have a hit to the head from a player that’s had multiple, multiple warnings,” Gallagher said. “So, whether the league decides to do the right thing, whether he gets another pass, that’s up to them.”

After Friday’s hit, Carbery and the Capitals will be tasked with moving on without Leonard for the foreseeable future, recalling forward Bogdan Trineyev from the AHL’s Hershey Bears on Sunday. They’ll meet Trouba and the Ducks one more time this season, hosting them at Capital One Arena on January 5.