Washington Capitals coach Spencer Carbery is the frontrunner to be the NHL's coach of the year. And in this Archive story, THN captured Carbery's initial days running the Caps.

Washington Capitals coach Spencer Carbery is the leading candidate to win the Jack Adams Award as the NHL's top bench boss. And in this story from THN's Jan. 29, 2024 edition -- Vol. 77, Issue 9 -- veteran writer Michael Traikos put together a profile of Carbery in his first season behind Washington's bench:

CHARACTER COACH

By Michael Traikos

Spencer Carbery, who is the youngest head coach in the NHL, is technically a rookie. But any illusions that the 42-year-old wasn’t cut out for the job went out the window early in the season when he made Evgeny Kuznetsov a healthy scratch.

It was a move that wasn’t made lightly.

At the time, Kuznetsov was heading into his 700th career game. But with only nine points in his first 19 games and with the Washington Capitals struggling to keep their heads above water in the crowded and competitive Eastern Conference, Carbery needed to send a message – even if it meant embarrassing a veteran who five-and-a-half years earlier had helped the franchise win its first and only Stanley Cup.

“It’s s---, but you gotta accept sometimes and trust the process,” Kuznetsov said after being a healthy scratch. “I love ‘Carbs’ so much. I trust what he’s doing, and he’s trying to help me find my game and get better and help the team because I know that I gotta be better in every area.”

Anytime a coach tells a player that he needs a mental reset, there’s more going on behind the scenes than a lack of production. This wasn’t about performance. It was more about attitude and about setting a standard of expectation. Not just for Kuznetsov, but for the entire roster.

“There’s a lot of challenging decisions that come everyday that you have to make as a head coach,” Carbery said. “But that one was definitely, from a public perspective, a pretty big statement. You’re making a decision on a high-profile player who has accomplished so much in his career that they’re not going to play that night. But that comes with the territory as a head coach.

“You have to sometimes make decisions that not everyone is going to agree with. And ‘Kuz’ definitely did not agree with it. But it was being done for the betterment of the player, from my eyes, and the team.”

In other words, Carbery is not looking like the second coming of Bruce Boudreau. He’s not a players’ coach. The way it’s going, he probably has more in common with drill sergeants such as Dale Hunter and Barry Trotz, which is exactly what is needed for a team that is trying to remain competitive while rebuilding.

After all, the Capitals, who missed the playoffs last season after eight consecutive post-season appearances, are in a transition period. They’re still being led by Alex Ovechkin, T.J. Oshie and John Carlson. But with Nicklas Backstrom’s career basically over and Kuznetsov’s name already out there in trade rumors, they need to start thinking about a future that involves players who are under the age of 25.

For now, the man guiding the team toward that uncertain future is a rookie bench boss who “feels like (he’s) been coaching for ages.”

Carbery never set out to be an NHL head coach. In a lot of ways, he never really sought out to be an NHLer at all.

The scrappy winger from Victoria, B.C., was on his fifth minor-league team in four years when he finally came to the realization that his dream of playing in the AHL – much less the NHL – probably wasn’t going to happen. By then, it wasn’t really a surprise.

Carbery was never drafted. Having played for a Div. III college, he wasn’t even on any NHL team’s radar. Once school ended, Carbery got an offer from the Central League and then spent the next several years jumping from team to team in the ECHL, doing whatever he could to stay in the lineup. He was a forward. But with 48 career goals and 638 penalty minutes, the 6-foot-2 enforcer was known more for his fists than his finesse with the puck. And he was getting older.

In the summer of 2010, the 28-year-old Carbery was at a crossroads: he could spend another year toiling in the minors, or he could put his finance degree to good use and get a real job. Initially, he chose the latter. But when nothing materialized, Carbery called back his coach with the ECHL’s South Carolina Stingrays and asked if he could return for one more season.

“Sure,” said the voice on the other end of the phone. With one caveat.

“Have you ever thought about coaching?” asked Stingrays coach Cail MacLean. “We have an assistant coach role, and I’d like you to consider it.”

“No, thanks,” Carbery said. “I’d like to play one more year.”

“Well, I’m not asking you to play,” MacLean said.

It was a not-so-subtle way of telling Carbery that his playing days were officially over. And it ended up being the push that Carbery needed to kick-start his next career. “It’s a crazy story,” Carbery said. “I literally had zero intentions of coaching and had never thought about it or aspired to do it. I never really even considered it.”

Looking back, the signs had been there all along. From MacLean, who is now an assistant coach with the Calgary Flames, to Colorado Avalanche coach Jared Bednar to Ryan Warsofsky, who is an assistant coach with the San Jose Sharks, the Stingrays organization is starting to become known as a coaching factory. “That was the blueprint of the Stingrays organization,” Carbery said. “It started with Jason Fitzsimmons. He’s now a pro scout with the Washington Capitals. He hired Jared as an assistant coach after he played there and knew what the organization stood for and knew the team. And then Jared hired Cail, who played there. And then Cail hired me. And then I hired Ryan Warsofsky.”

From the start, Carbery loved coaching. He had to, because he wasn’t doing it for the money. In fact, Carbery earned more money painting houses as a side job in the summer than he was paid as an ECHL assistant. But what he gave up in salary he more than made up for in experience and opportunity.

“I saw the game through a different lens,” he said. “I loved trying to make players better whether it was in their individual game or in our team game, through film and watching games. I loved it from Day 1.”

A year later, Carbery was elevated to head coach, a role he stuck with for five seasons. During that span, he guided the Stingrays to five consecutive playoff appearances, reaching the ECHL’s Kelly Cup final in 2014-15. From there, he coached one season with the Saginaw Spirit in the OHL, then got hired as an assistant with the AHL’s Providence Bruins, followed by three seasons with the Capitals’ AHL affiliate in Hershey.

Carbery’s big coaching break came in 2021, when he joined Sheldon Keefe’s staff with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Aside from running one of the best power plays in the NHL, what Carbery gained from the experience was how much every single decision was dissected and scrutinized. “When I was in Toronto, you’re all-in, every day, every minute of it,” he said. “The team, and all the things we went through there, there’s no joking. You eat, sleep and breathe it.”

However, ask him where he learned the most and he goes back to his time in the ECHL. Players in the ECHL are typically not destined for greatness. It’s a long way from the NHL for skaters, but they still have a love for the game. “High character,” he said of the players in the ECHL. “That’s the thing I took from Cail and Jared the most is how they treated players and how they coached and how hard they worked. I wanted to make sure the foundation of me as a coach is rooted in that.”

The Capitals are a team that is still led by skilled veterans, but if they hope to stay competitive while transitioning from old to young – the kind of thing that the Boston Bruins have made look easy – it will be because of their work ethic and character.

That’s ultimately why Kuznetsov was benched. It wasn’t to necessarily spark him to become a better player. Rather, it was to send a message to the likes of Aliaksei Protas, Connor McMichael and Ivan Miroshnichenko, who weren’t even drafted when the Capitals won the Cup back in 2018.

“It’s a unique situation,” Carbery said. “We have that blend of veteran players and younger players who are trying to learn how to win and trying to learn how to be effective NHL players in a winning environment. And there’s no question it’s a challenge in trying to balance the two while also trying to win every night.

“But, and I always say this to guys on the team, I often have to make difficult decisions, and I’ll be the first one to say that they’re not always right. Difficult decisions are well thought out and calculated. It’s not like I’m shooting from the hip.”