The Washington Capitals hired Spencer Carbery to be its 20th head coach in franchise history, Tuesday.
Carbery comes to DC with no prior head coaching experience in the NHL but did spend multiple seasons as the bench boss of the Hershey Bears. The 41-year-old former Stingrays player was in high demand as he interviewed with other teams before eventually agreeing to a four-year deal with the Caps.
So, what is all of the hype about?
Previous coaching resume
Carbery’s coaching journey began right as his four-year professional playing career ended after some encouragement from his peers. Carbery’s final two seasons as a pro came in the ECHL as the Capitals’ ECHL-affiliated South Carolina Stingrays and he won a championship in 2008-09 under Jared Bednar, who later went on to coach the Colorado Avalanche to a Stanley Cup championship in 2022.
According to the Capitals’ Mike Vogel, Carbery cited Bednar and former Stingrays assistant/head coach Cali MacLean as the people who had the biggest impacts on his career.
“I would say for me it was Cail MacLean, but also Jared Bednar, who I played for and got to know and had more of a professional relationship with and picked his brain,” Carbery said per Vogel. “He is someone that I’ve leaned on a lot and have learned from, because he has been through all of these situations that I’m just trying to embark on. He’s been a mentor. I always had a lot of respect for him as a player, for his coaching style and the way he taught. So I’ve really tried to lean on him a lot.”
Carbery served as an assistant coach under MacLean in 2010-11 after retiring as a player the year before. It didn’t take long for Carbery to ascend with South Carolina as he was immediately promoted to head coach and director of hockey operations a year after jumping behind the bench. He held that same position for five years, compiling a 207-115-38 record with the Stingrays which made him the all-time winningest coach in team history.
Carbery took home the John Brophy Award as the ECHL’s Coach of the Year in 2014 and was the runner-up for the award in 2015 and 2016. The Stingrays made the playoffs in each of his five seasons as head coach, won a pair of division titles, and made two Eastern Conference Finals appearances. His 2014-15 team recorded an ECHL-record 23-game win streak and eventually advanced to the Kelly Cup Finals. In each of the five seasons under Carbery, the Stingrays improved their point total.
After his ultra successful stint in the ECHL, Carbery moved to the world of Canadian major junior hockey as head coach of the OHL’s Saginaw Spirit. That same season he served as one of Team Canada Black’s assistant coaches in the 2017 U-17 World Hockey Challenge. He lasted just one season in the OHL before accepting his first job offer in the AHL as an assistant on Jay Leach’s Providence Bruins staff.
Spencer Carbery named @Capitals Head Coach, becoming the first former Spirit head coach to move on to an @NHL head coaching job.
📰 https://t.co/xdlNY7rjIP pic.twitter.com/vmymC1pEN5
— Saginaw Spirit (@SpiritHockey) May 30, 2023
The Bruins made the playoffs during that 2017-18 campaign with Carbery helping them to a 45-26-5 record but just as soon as he arrived to Providence, he left. The Hershey Bears’ head coaching position opened up after Troy Mann was let go and Carbery’s familiarity with the organization due to his time in South Carolina made him a perfect candidate for the job. At the time of his hiring, he was the second youngest head coach in the AHL.
Carbery’s first season in charge in Hershey was a success as the Bears went on a 17-game point streak that helped them return to the playoffs after missing out in their final season under Mann. Overall, Carbery led Hershey to a 104-50-9-8 record (.658 points percentage) in his three seasons at the helm but unfortunately did not get the chance to take the Bears deep into the playoffs due to the COVID-19 pandemic cancelling the AHL postseason in both 2020 and 2021. In each of the three seasons under Carbery, the Bears improved their points percentage.
In his final season in Hershey, Carbery led the Bears to the Macgregor Kilpatrick Trophy as the AHL’s best team and won the Louis A.R. Pieri Memorial Award for Coach of the Year. That performance earned him a multi-year extension with the club. But, instead of returning to Hershey and perhaps being the Caps’ coach in waiting, Carbery took his first NHL job as he received an offer to be a part of Sheldon Keefe’s coaching staff with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
In Toronto, Carbery primary duties were to lead the Leafs’ power play. The season before his arrival, the Leafs’ man advantage unit operated at just 20 percent effectiveness. Carbery arrived and it shot up to first in the league at 27.3 percent effectiveness in the 2021-22 season and then finished ranked second-best during the 2022-23 season, behind only the Edmonton Oilers.
The familiarity factor
Given Carbery’s long, successful track record as a coach in the Capitals system, he has varying degrees of familiarity with players that could factor into the roster he will command for the next four years.
Here’s a list of the most notable names that fall under that context and how they are connected to Carbery.
- Connor McMichael – 2017 World Under-17 Team Canada Development Camp, 2020-21 Hershey Bears
- Henrik Rybinski – 2017 World Under-17 Team Canada Development Camp
- Garrett Pilon – 2018-21 Hershey Bears
- Beck Malenstyn – 2018-20 Hershey Bears
- Lucas Johansen – 2018-21 Hershey Bears
- Joe Snively – 2018-21 Hershey Bears
- Alex Alexeyev – 2019-21 Hershey Bears
- Martin Fehervary – 2019-21 Hershey Bears
- Riley Sutter – 2019-21 Hershey Bears
- Aliaksei Protas – 2020-21 Hershey Bears
- Zach Fucale – 2020-21 Hershey Bears
- Hunter Shepard – 2020-21 Hershey Bears
- Rasmus Sandin – 2021-23 Toronto Maple Leafs
- Nicolas Aube-Kubel – 2022 Toronto Maple Leafs
Outside of just players, current Caps assistant coach Scott Allen was also on Carbery’s staff in Hershey for two seasons (2019-21). Current Caps video coach Emily Engel-Natzke has similar experience, operating under Carbery in Hershey in the same position during the 2020-21 campaign.
When you speak to people who have worked with Carbery before, they generally highlight his kindness, thoughtfulness, and professionalism.
“It’s going to be a great mix,” Bryan Helmer, the Bears’ VP of hockey operations, said to the Associated Press. “Spencer really stays on top of it. He expects a lot out of his players and he holds them accountable, which is a great thing. I see big things coming from Spencer and what he can do with the Caps.”
Congrats to Spencer Carbery! An amazing coach and a really quality human. Worked with Spencer for @SCStingrays, then was here for his 3 seasons in Hershey. Super smart and a great hockey mind. You knew he'd be a head coach in the NHL soon enough. Thrilled for him and his family! https://t.co/HtXA9HONGL
— Zack Fisch (@zackfisch) May 30, 2023
The power play
The Capitals’ power play, once a vaunted and feared unit, has struggled with consistency and large stretches of stale unproductiveness in recent years. With Blaine Forsythe now out, improving the power play will come down to Carbery and the assistants that join him on the Caps’ bench.
So, how exactly did Carbery transform Toronto’s power play into the force it eventually became under his watch? Let’s delve a little into what the Leafs did so well.
One of the most encouraging aspects of the Leafs’ unit is that during Carbery’s two seasons in charge, they operated at the very top of the NHL despite not having a single player in the top ten of the league in power play goals or overall power play points. It wasn’t a one-man unit being led by Auston Matthews and his shot or Mitch Marner and his playmaking ability. The scoring load was shared and yet the team still produced a ton of offense.
All good power plays start with a good zone entry. Although perhaps it has given many Caps fans nightmares, the slingshot or variations of the slingshot are quite popular around the league and Carbery’s power play in Toronto was no different. It did have a slight deviation as opposite to the Caps, the Leafs’ zone entry was almost solely focused on the left-side boards. Here’s a good example of that in video form.
Morgan Rielly gains center and then turns around in typical slingshot fashion to drop the puck off to a hard-charging Ondrej Kase. Kase feeds a streaking Auston Matthews who then dishes to John Tavares along the left-side boards. Tavares then has a set of options that should be very familiar to Caps fans. He can either bank the puck back off the boards to Rielly behind him at the point, try to feed Matthews who heads for the goal line, curl around and keep possession, or hard rim the puck around the boards.
That’s about where the similarities end though. The Caps under Forsythe’s direction have tended to be static in their set positions. Alex Ovechkin famously can stand in just one spot unmoving for an entire opportunity which allows him to easily stay out for the entire two-minute chance. The Leafs operate in almost constant motion. Once a player makes a pass, they move. Even all of the players away from the puck move with the pass which creates new passing lanes and confuses penalty killers. Very rarely does a Leafs player hold onto the puck for an extended amount of time like an Evgeny Kuznetsov or Nicklas Backstrom would.
That constant motion is paired with their top players interchanging spots on the ice to further keep opponents guessing. No, not just the once in every 10 power play switch that Ovechkin and John Carlson sometimes do, but multiple switches during a singular power play. Now, the Leafs certainly have much more younger and more mobile star power than the Caps currently do so it will be up to Carbery to see if his system still works in DC.
Carbery and general manager Brian MacLellan are scheduled to meet with the media at a press conference on Thursday. We should get more insight from both men on the hire and Carbery’s four-year contract then.
The Caps got the guy they always thought was going to take over once Laviolette was done – just the road to get there turned out to be a bit unexpected. Now, it will be up to Carbery to prove them right.
Headline photo: Tori Hartman/Hershey Bears
