Spencer Carbery has the Washington Capitals out to a 27-10-4 first half of the 2024-25 season. The team’s leap to the top of the Eastern Conference comes just a season removed from barely sneaking into the postseason with the worst goal differential, minus-37, of any playoff team in the salary cap era.
The team’s surprising rise has many already calling for Carbery to win the Jack Adams Award presented to the NHL’s Coach of the Year after the season. Carbery does appear to be the early front-runner for the honor, as he was the clear victor in a recent poll of 16 NHL.com writers.
Carbery received 13 of the 16 available first-place votes, losing the other three to Winnipeg Jets bench boss and former Capitals assistant coach Scott Arniel. Minnesota’s John Hynes, New Jersey’s Sheldon Keefe, Vegas’s Bruce Cassidy, and Los Angeles’s Jim Hiller round out the rest of the top group, receiving 10-plus points in the polling.
After his first season in charge of the Capitals, Carbery finished seventh in the official Jack Adams Award voting. Washington ended the 2023-24 campaign with 91 standings points, a mark they are on pace to smash this year by 25 points.
Carbery has kept the Capitals ultra-competitive, which has helped superstar Alex Ovechkin, 39, produce goals at an unheard-of rate for a player his age. Ovechkin will enter Friday night’s game against the Montreal Canadiens with 19 goals in 25 games this season and just 22 goals shy of tying Wayne Gretzky for a share of the league’s all-time goals record.
Perhaps more impressive is that the Capitals survived without their captain for 16 games due to a broken leg he suffered in November. Without Ovechkin, Washington went 10-5-1 and maintained their position atop the Metropolitan Division.
Outside of Ovechkin, players like Dylan Strome, Connor McMichael, Aliaksei Protas, and Tom Wilson are also on pace for career-best years under Carbery’s guidance. All four of those names are holdovers from previous Capitals regimes.
