Todd Nelson left the Hershey Bears to join the Pittsburgh Penguins on June 20, getting a promotion back to the NHL as an assistant coach.
Nelson, the AHL’s coach of the year during the 2023-24 campaign, compiled a 141-53-22 record (.704 points percentage) during his three seasons as the Bears’ bench boss, leading Hershey to an AHL record nine straight playoff series wins. Nelson helped Hershey capture back-to-back Calder Cups in 2023 and 2024, the second and third championships of his career as a head coach in the league.
Without Nelson, the Bears are left with a major leadership hole, and according to Washington Capitals GM Chris Patrick, the team does not yet have a timetable for naming a new head coach.
“We haven’t done a lot right now just because of the timing of when Todd got the job at Pittsburgh kinda lined up with us getting ready for the draft here,” Patrick said on Saturday. “We got a couple of good internal candidates there, too, with Patrick (Wellar) and Nick (Bootland). So we’ll go through the process.
“We’ll have some time here in this next week in development camp to sit around with Spencer and the Hershey guys, and we’ll figure out a plan on the coaches.”
The 41-year-old Wellar, a defenseman with the Bears’ Calder Cup champion teams in 2009 and 2010, has been an assistant in Hershey for the last seven seasons. Bootland, 46, has been coaching since the 2008-09 season. After ending his playing career, he spent 14 seasons as the head coach and director of hockey operations with the ECHL’s Kalamazoo Wings before being hired as an assistant in Hershey ahead of the 2022-23 season.
While Wellar and Bootland are both worthy candidates, Patrick was quick to add that the team has also heard from others interested.
“Obviously, in the coaching world, as soon as a position becomes available, you get inundated with resumes,” Patrick said. “So there’s no shortage of candidates right now.”
While Hershey’s coaching staff is in flux, the Capitals will return with the same leadership next season after assistants Mitch Love and Kirk Muller were passed over for head coaching positions.
“At the NHL level, when you’re trying to hire a coach, it’s really hard,” Patrick said. “Like every candidate that comes in is really good and can do the job. And so it just comes down to what you feel your team needs, what kind of message you think the coach is going to bring, and what kind of style of play they have. So yeah, I don’t know. They’re the best 32 jobs in the world, the best 32 coaches in the world, and it’s really hard to get those jobs. And so I guess I’m not totally surprised (Mitch and Kirk didn’t get jobs), it’s always competitive.”
Once development camp comes to a close and free agency slows down later this week, the Capitals will have plenty of time to conduct interviews and plot their course with Hershey where the team is expected to be much younger next season and could be led by prospects like Andrew Cristall, Ilya Protas, and Ivan Miroshnichenko.
