Alex Ovechkin isn’t scoring, and Spencer Carbery is considering all his options

Ovechkin still leads the Capitals with 15 total points this season, and the team as a whole has struggled to produce, so Ovechkin is far from the only player in a scoring slump. But as Ovechkin chases Wayne Gretzky’s record of 894 goals, a mere five goals more than a quarter of the way through the season isn’t what anyone expects from him — least of all Ovechkin.

“If I have a chance to put the puck in, I have to,” Ovechkin told reporters after Thursday’s game against Dallas, his eighth in a row without a goal. Ovechkin’s 1,500th point came when he picked up a secondary assist on a power-play goal by center Dylan Strome, not the way anyone would have envisioned Ovechkin reaching the milestone.

Throughout his career, Ovechkin has been a volume shooter. This season, though he leads Washington in shot attempts with 168, his 25 individual high-danger scoring chances rank fourth behind Tom Wilson (40), Strome (27) and Connor McMichael (26). Strome leads the Capitals with 10 goals, while Wilson has eight and McMichael joins Ovechkin, Evgeny Kuznetsov and Anthony Mantha with five.

Ovechkin’s shooting percentage also sits at a career-low 5.95 percent, so odds are that his pace will pick up eventually. But it’s the way his scoring chances have dropped off in recent weeks that’s most concerning to Coach Spencer Carbery.

“I wasn’t [concerned] at the beginning of the year. I would say a little bit as of late,” Carbery told The Washington Post on Sunday. “At the beginning of the year, I felt like he was getting a lot of chances, and so that’s okay, right? When you’re getting chances, eventually — goal scorers will go through ups and downs, but if you’re getting chances, eventually they’ll start to go in. As of late, those have started to dry up other than off of faceoffs, and obviously I take special teams out of it. That’s what’s concerning.”

It has been an uphill battle for Carbery this season as he tries to get Ovechkin going. The team’s offensive woes haven’t made it straightforward to find the right linemates for the winger, with Carbery vacillating between Strome and Kuznetsov as the top-line center.

Knowing Kuznetsov and Ovechkin have worked as a duo before, Carbery gave it a long look for much of November, hoping to spark both players. But when the line became “so significantly bad” analytically, Carbery put Strome back in that role.

“Their line, essentially, [was] getting outplayed so severely that you have to make a change as a coach. I don’t know the reason why,” Carbery said. “If you ask me that, that’s the million-dollar question. I’ve lost hours of sleep over why. I don’t know. I’ve talked to both them together. I’ve talked to them separately. I’ve watched each and every second of their shifts together. … It just keeps coming back to the same result of it not working.”

Washington controls play better with Ovechkin, Strome and Wilson on a line together than when Ovechkin plays with Kuznetsov. With Strome, the line takes 60 percent of the shot attempts when it is on the ice; it’s just 40 percent for the version with Kuznetsov. But controlling play hasn’t yet translated into higher production from Ovechkin, while his linemates have combined for 18 goals.

Carbery doesn’t dismiss the idea that aging could be playing a role in Ovechkin’s scoring drought, but he hasn’t spent much time considering the possibility. His focus is on the player in front of him — and trying to do everything he can to get Ovechkin producing the way the Capitals need.

“It’s just not the way my mind works,” Carbery said. “Am I sitting here saying I don’t understand Father Time and don’t give that credit? No, that’s not what I’m saying. I just don’t spend any time thinking about, ‘Oh, could it be this?’ I’m all, ‘How are we going to help O be an effective player for our group to win games and put him in positions to have success?’ ”

One of the things Carbery has considered — and would like to experiment with, though he has no timeline for when the experiment might happen — is moving around Ovechkin on the power play. With 300 goals on the man advantage, Ovechkin has the most in NHL history and has become synonymous with his spot at the top of the left faceoff circle.

But the Capitals’ power play is last in the NHL with a conversion rate of 9 percent, and Ovechkin’s lone power-play tally was a back door tap-in on the other side of the crease from his office. Moving Ovechkin triggers a series of additional questions about the power play’s structure, making it a challenging proposition for Carbery and assistant coach Kirk Muller.

As Carbery continues to be concerned about his slumping captain, though, it’s an option that is being evaluated.

“It’s a really challenging — not from a standpoint [of Ovechkin.] He’ll do anything you ask him to,” Carbery said. “It’s just the execution of it is very, very challenging. That’s where we’re navigating: Does he stay somewhere? Can we move him around more? Can there be more movement? . . . There’s a lot of things that go into it. But what we’re looking at is all those different options of evolving the power play and evolving it with Ovi, how teams defend him and his role and what he’s been so accustomed to and what he’s been so successful at.

“Does it need to stay that way for the next however long? Or could we be more productive, and would it be more beneficial for the team and him to move into some different spots?”