Chris Patrick and Spencer Carbery are in their first NHL season working together as general manager and head coach, and to great results. The Capitals are sitting second place in the league with a 47-16-9 record (103 points). They have scored the second-most goals in the league (260) and have given up the third-least (185) to date.
What few Capitals fans may know is that this is not the first time the two leaders have been paired together. Patrick and Carbery formed the same leadership tandem with the AHL’s Hershey Bears from 2018 to 2021 before Carbery was hired by the Toronto Maple Leafs as an assistant coach.
Hershey posted an impressive 104-50-17 record under the two’s guidance. The Bears also won the 2020-21 Macgregor Kilpatrick Trophy, awarded to the team with the most standings points in the league. In the same season, Carbery won the Louis A. R. Pieri Memorial Award as AHL coach of the year.
The pair’s familiarity has led to a “really good” relationship, in Patrick’s words, where everything seems to be clicking at a high level now with the Capitals.
“We worked very, very closely in those days,” Patrick explained to The Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli. “We’re really comfortable with each other. He can be honest with me. I can be honest with him. I think we have similar viewpoints on how we want the team to play and what kind of players we think fit in well and what our identity needs to be.”
That mutual honesty has led the Capitals to a whiplash turnaround from last season, becoming the first franchise since 1979-80 to go from being the last to clinch a playoff spot one year to being the first to clinch in the next.
Patrick credits Carbery’s culture for keeping the team focused and consistent on the ice. The Caps have had no losing streak longer than three games this season and have won four or more consecutive games six separate times. The team’s dominance has the competitive Carbery pegged as the favorite to win the 2024-25 Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s Coach of the Year.
“Carbs and his staff, I think, did a really good job getting everybody on the same page of how we need to play and what we need to do to be successful as a team, and the kind of detail we have to play with,” Patrick said.
Patrick and Carbery’s years-long partnership has seen the two invest in the same young talents that are paying dividends for the Capitals this season. Wingers Connor McMichael and Aliaskei Protas, both of whom Carbery coached in Hershey and whom Patrick supported, are having career years.
Even after Carbery decided to advance his own career in Toronto, the duo’s hard work together translated into eventual back-to-back Calder Cup championships for the Bears in 2023 and 2024. According to Patrick, who says he “was involved” in Carbery’s hiring in Hershey, it felt like their partnership was meant to be reunited at the NHL level.
Patrick compared the timing of Carbery’s return to the Capitals organization in 2023 to when a team lands a long sought-after player years after they’ve developed with another franchise.
“You think you have something with somebody, and it doesn’t pan out, but then maybe a few years later, they’re on your team,” he elaborated. “It was kind of one of those things where he’s gonna go, but, I mean, he’s not going as the head coach, so maybe there’s a chance to bring him back as our head someday. And it actually turned out that way. So it worked out well.”
In just year one under Patrick and Carbery’s leadership, the Caps are in the hunt for their fourth President’s Trophy in franchise history and well-positioned to make another run at the Stanley Cup.
