WASHINGTON (AP) — Spencer Carbery integrated several offseason additions to perfection, helped the Washington Capitals become the first NHL team to qualify for the playoffs this season and navigated Alex Ovechkin’s successful pursuit of breaking Wayne Gretzky’s career goals record.
All that makes Carbery a prime candidate to win the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year, and his contemporaries around the league — believe he deserves a ton of credit.
“He’s turned them into a deep, four-line juggernaut that just wins hockey games,” said Tampa Bay's Jon Cooper, the longest-tenured coach in the league who won the Stanley Cup in 2020 and '21 and has made two other trips to the final. “They do everything right. There’s no egos on the team and he’s found a way to coach a Hall of Fame superstar and coach players that are just surviving to be in the lineup every night and he’s found a way to make it all work.”
Quick work
Carbery previously coached Washington's top affiliate, the Hershey Bears of the American Hockey League, before two years as a Toronto Maple Leafs assistant. He replaced Peter Laviolette as Capitals coach in the spring of 2023.
“From Day 1, he put in a system that wins hockey games,” said Carolina coach Rod Brind'Amour, the 2021 Jack Adams winner.
After initially wanting to play fast, Carbery changed on the fly to a tight-checking, defensive style when it was clear the personnel were better suited for that and adjusted the team's offensive approach accordingly.
Paul Maurice, who has coached the second-most games of in league history and won the Stanley Cup last year with Florida, said Carbery's work has been “incredible in a short period of time.”
“He got them to play very hard,” Maurice said. “Last year he came in and changed the intensity level, and now it’s systemized. If you can get your team to play hard, and then they’re learning these systems, the more time they spend doing it, the faster that they get.”
Another level
Capitals general manager Chris Patrick, who goes back more than a decade with Carbery to their time with the ECHL's South Carolina Stingrays, has been most impressed with the 43-year-old not thinking he had it all figured out.
“He came in and he looked for ways to improve in his own approach: ‘On bench, off bench, how can I get better? How can I improve?’” Patrick said. "I see areas where he’s definitely different than how he was last year.”
Carbery has also had different aims. In Year 1, he was tasked with trying to squeeze the most out of a borderline playoff contender and made the most of an aging roster, while this season has been about maximizing some extra talent at his disposal and taking his team to another level.
“Both years he’s been here, he’s gotten a lot out of the group,” said St. Louis coach Jim Montgomery, who won the Jack Adams in 2023 when he and the Boston Bruins broke NHL records for the most wins and points. “They play an intelligent, hard-working game."
Until a late-season swoon after clinching the division and the No. 1 seed in the East, Washington allowed the second-fewest goals in the league and scored the most.
“That takes discipline from your structure,” said Seattle's Dan Bylsma, who coached Pittsburgh to the Cup in 2009 and won the Jack Adams in 2011. "The structure with which they play with is evident when you watch it over and over again, and that’s a credit to his coaching and a credit to the guys.”
Clear communicator
Carbery is not Patrick Roy or John Tortorella in terms of publicly calling out players. But unlike his predecessor, Carbery is not afraid to answer honestly about someone's struggles and does so in a measured way.
Still, he remains a player-friendly coach.
"As guys get to know Spence, that they see that and it’s coming from a good place,” close friend and San Jose coach Ryan Warsofsky said. “When it’s time to be hard on someone, he can do it, knowing it’s from a good place. That’s why he gets such a good response.”
Patrick calls communication skills one of Carbery's biggest strengths.
“He’s more open-minded than a lot of coaches as far as some of the quirks of certain players and willing to work with them, which is why I think when you see a bunch of new guys come in here and play really well, that’s a big part of it,” Patrick said.
Example A is Pierre-Luc Dubois, the well-traveled center who set career highs in assists and points after Washington took a risk acquiring him in a trade from Los Angeles last summer. Dubois applauded Carbery and his staff for believing in him, then he rewarded them for that trust.
Other newcomers also excelled under Carbery, who made their transitions to a new team as smooth as possible.
“Day 1, the communication was there: what he sees me doing, the way he wants me to play, the way he feels like I will have success playing,” winger Taylor Raddysh said. “You know what your job is, you come here every day and work.”
Carbery has also done a good job delegating responsibilities among assistants Kirk Muller, Scott Allen and Mitch Love, along with goaltending coach Scott Murray and skills coach Kenny McCudden. Combined, they've helped the Capitals have their most wins in a season since 2017.
“He’s built a really good staff that gets along really well, that works really hard and that complement each other well,” Patrick said. "It’s encouraging to see his continued growth because he’s still a young coach in this league, and if he continues to grow, he can be a really, really good coach in this league for a long time.”
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Stephen Whyno, The Associated Press
