Wednesday night’s matchup between the Washington Capitals and Colorado Avalanche will be a unique one due to both men that lead their respective teams behind the bench. Spencer Carbery and Jared Bednar will square off in the first-ever, head-coaching battle between two former South Carolina Stingrays.
The two bench bosses both plied their trade for the ECHL franchise for multiple years as players before eventually coaching the team. Bednar skated on the team’s blueline from 1995-2002 before jumping behind the bench as an assistant for the 2002-03 campaign. He became head coach in 2007, coaching Carbery on the 2008-09 Kelly Cup winning South Carolina team.
Carbery, a left wing, played two seasons for the Stingrays from 2008-2010 and transitioned behind the bench for the 2010-11 season. He became head coach in 2011 after both Bednar and current Calgary Flames assistant coach Cail MacLean departed for jobs in the AHL.
For the first time ever, two former Stingrays will face off as NHL head coaches tonight! 🏒
Tune in to watch @Capitals Head Coach Spencer Carbery and @Avalanche Head Coach Jared Bednar square off in Colorado – puck drops at 9:30 PM EST! 📺#OnceARayAlwaysARay pic.twitter.com/Xl4wCZZgno
— SC Stingrays (@SCStingrays) January 24, 2024
After being hired by the Capitals this past offseason, Carbery cited Bednar and MacLean, in an interview with the Capitals’ Mike Vogel, as the people who have had the biggest impact on his career to this point.
“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. “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.”
Bednar is also the reason that Carbery is still even in the pro hockey world. After the ECHL’s Fresno Falcons folded midseason in 2008-09, Carbery planned to move to South Carolina, where his mother was living, and take up a regular, 9-to-5 job in the finance sector.
According to a story from the Washington Post’s Bailey Johnson, Carbery received calls from other ECHL teams looking to employ his services but declined them all. That is until Bednar called him and asked him to give the Stingrays a shot.
“You’re already coming out this way,” Bednar reportedly said to Carbery. “Why don’t you give it a try with the Stingrays, just for a couple of weeks?”
The rest is history. Carbery was an ECHL champion just months later and eventually rose through the ranks of the Capitals organization to the spot behind the bench in the NHL that he now inhabits.
Bednar would depart Charleston and bounce around four different teams in the AHL over the next seven seasons before taking home the Calder Cup while in charge of the Lake Erie Monsters in 2016. He would parlay that success into his first NHL job, a head-coaching position with the upstart Avalanche the next year.
After making the playoffs in five of his first six years in charge, the Avs took home the Stanley Cup in the spring of 2022. With their coaching journeys so closely mirrored to this point, Carbery will be hoping the same is in store for him and the Capitals.
The first step towards that ultimate goal comes on Wednesday night as Carbery’s Caps are in bad need of two points to stop a losing skid. Bednar’s Avs will be a very tough test though, coming into the matchup ranked fourth in the entire NHL with a 30-14-3 record.
