Lars Eller stood in front of his locker and glanced over a box score that would not have looked so favorable without his influence.

At the top, it showed a 5-3 win for the Washington Capitals over the Philadelphia Flyers on Wednesday night. Further down, there were two more assists for Eller, the Capitals’ puck-possessing, third-line center and a regular source of offense through 50 games. An even closer look revealed that Eller and Brett Connolly, who plays on the wing to Eller’s right, were on the ice for each of the Capitals’ first three goals.

“It looks good,” Eller said, a light smirk tugging at the sides of his mouth. And he was soon asked why it is easy to say the same about his game.

“I think just playing consistently in my spot,” Eller said while slowly folding the box score into a neat square. “I am playing center the whole time and I am just feeling comfortable. I am just feeling good about my role, my game.”

That comfort can be attributed to Eller being in his second season with the franchise, but there is also a more nuanced reason. While Capitals coach Barry Trotz has often mixed up his lineup this season, matching different wingers with different centers on a sometimes game-to-game basis, he has rarely split up Eller and Connolly. The pair, brought in last season for secondary scoring depth then put together on the third line, is continuing to provide that for a Capitals team that is not getting enough from top-six forwards such as T.J. Oshie (four even-strength goals) and Andre Burakovsky (four goals in 25 games).

Alex Ovechkin leads the team and NHL with 30 goals, and there is a significant drop off after that. Connolly is tied for second with 13, two away from the career-high he set while playing with Eller last season, and Eller has 10 goals and 15 assists. Eller and Connolly are also on a second power-play unit that has scored four times in the past nine games.

“They seem to read off each other,” Trotz said Wednesday morning. And Connolly “is a natural finisher on that line for a lot of reasons. They’ve played a lot of games together. I try to pair guys for the most part and take two guys on each line who you think will work together and you sort of move the other part around. Lars and Conno have done that the last two years, so they’ve been productive and Lars’ line has carried us for a couple weeks now.”

Trotz’s lineup tinkering continued Wednesday, as he sat forward Jakub Vrana as a healthy scratch and bumped Chandler Stephenson up to the third line with Eller and Connolly. That led to two goals by Stephenson in 47 seconds, the first after Eller fired an odd-angle shot at the net and created a rebound for Stephenson to tap in. Trotz has even separated Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom in recent weeks, and cycled new parts around centers Evgeny Kuznetsov, Backstrom and Jay Beagle. But he has not erred from his pairing of Eller and Connolly, and said after the win over the Flyers that they have, outside of Ovechkin, been the team’s two best players as of late.

Next the Capitals travel to face the Pittsburgh Penguins at PPG Paints Arena tonight, a familiar building after playing there in the second round of back-to-back playoff runs. The Penguins have not received the same kind of secondary scoring punch that Eller and Connolly have provided, as there is a drop off after Evgeni Malkin (26 goals), Phil Kessel (21), Sidney Crosby (17), Patric Hornqvist (15), Jake Guentzel (15) and Connor Sheary (12). After that, no player has more than six goals and the Penguins (28-21-1), who have scored 14 times in their last three games and are six points behind the Capitals in the Metropolitan Division standings.

The third-line production has helped the Capitals (30-15-5) to the best record in the division and the league’s eighth best offense at three goals per game. And while it is only the start of February, it is the kind of factor that could help swing a playoff series if more of the Capitals’ top-six forwards can also hit their stride.

“I think we just read off each other well,” Connolly said of Eller and him. “I think Lars is really good in the corners and we’re kind of getting that chemistry from last year. It took us a little bit this year to get it back but we knew we were going to find it and it’s been a lot of fun. He’s been a big part of getting my game going in the kind of direction I want it to be.”

Jesse.Dougherty@washpost.com

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