This was not, strictly speaking, the plan.
But then, with the Capitals set to face Edmonton on a mid-November night, center Nic Dowd was a late scratch with an upper-body injury. Washington’s forward lines shuffled, and Ethen Frank, Sonny Milano and Hendrix Lapierre ended up together.
They didn’t see much ice time in a 7-4 victory over the Oilers, but then came the next night in Montreal. Frank had two goals and two assists. Milano had two goals. Lapierre had two assists. Washington won, 8-4, and the trio was one of its most productive lines — which was unexpected.
“Just doing whatever I can to help the team win,” Frank said that night. “Points are just a bonus.”
That might be true, but Frank is racking up quite the bonus account. In 12 games this season, he has three goals and five assists; in 24 games last season, during his first taste of NHL action, he recorded seven points.
“Just keeping it simple — using his speed, using his shot,” Coach Spencer Carbery said Saturday night. “Any opportunity that he has to get pucks, he is.”
Frank, 27, took the long route to the NHL. He grew up in Nebraska with a poster of Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin on his wall. The state wasn’t exactly a hockey hotbed in his youth, so he played quite a bit of roller hockey growing up, then played junior hockey in Lincoln before moving to Michigan for college. Frank played five years at Western Michigan — benefiting from an extra year of NCAA eligibility because of the coronavirus pandemic — and led the nation in scoring with 26 goals in his final year.
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The Capitals initially signed Frank, who was an undrafted free agent, to a contract with their American Hockey League affiliate, the Hershey Bears. In March 2023, toward the end of his first full season with the Bears, Washington upgraded Frank to a one-year, two-way NHL deal. But the following season, after a subpar training camp, Frank spent the entirety of the year in the AHL.
Frank didn’t make his NHL debut until January 2025, but he impressed immediately when he got there. Frank’s speed has always been his top attribute, and he used his pace to score twice in his first three games.
But his hot start fizzled out, which isn’t uncommon for older players who take a more winding road to the NHL. When the initial energy wears off and the reality of the challenge ahead sets in, players who looked like world-beaters at first tend to drop back down toward average.
That may well happen with Frank again this season. But Carbery is seeing something different this time around.
“I feel like right now, he’s got a ton of confidence, so when he gets the puck, [he’s] not just [throwing] it away. It’s like: ‘Let me move my feet. Let me see if I can hold on to this. Let me see if I can make something happen and delay or attack the net,’” Carbery said Monday before the Capitals faced Columbus. “When you’re playing like that, that’s a great spot to be in for a player like himself. Now he has the puck a lot more. He’s in great spots with it. He’s using his speed. There’s a lot of good things that are happening when he’s on the ice.
“Look, where does it go from here? I don’t know. But I can tell you right now that he’s doing things for our team and in the National Hockey League that are forcing a coach’s hand to go, like, ‘How do we get this guy out on the ice more?’”
Who’s hot? FRANKY’S RED HOT!!! pic.twitter.com/3TOo7293Fy
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Frank’s line with Lapierre and Milano saw heavy usage in the final minutes of Monday’s 5-1 win over the Blue Jackets, after the victory was already locked up. It wasn’t a high-octane night for the trio — the one point among the three was a secondary assist for Lapierre — but their speed, and Frank’s increased confidence, still stuck out.
After having to battle his way to an NHL role, getting an opportunity to show what he can do on a nightly basis is all Frank can ask for.
“Just trying to step up my game,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been around the group long enough to where I can start to raise my level of play. Everyone knows how I played in the [AHL] and, from my point of view, I don’t see why there’s any reason I can’t do that here as well.”
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