Capitals' Spencer Carbery Wins 2024-25 NHL Jack Adams Award

Spencer Carbery is being celebrated as the top coach in the NHL after contributing to Alex Ovechkin's historic season and the Washington Capitals' turnaround into a playoff contender.

Carbery was named the winner of the 2024-25 Jack Adams Award on Saturday, beating out two other first-time finalists in the Winnipeg Jets' Scott Arniel and the Montreal Canadiens' Martin St. Louis.

The Jack Adams Award is voted on annually by members of the NHL Broadcasters’ Association.

The Capitals, viewed as a fringe playoff team heading into the season, spent the summer loading up on players looking for a bounce-back campaign like Jakob Chychrun and Pierre-Luc Dubois.

Carbery, hired in May 2023 as a first-time head coach and replacement for Peter Laviolette, was tasked with revitalizing their careers alongside helping young players like Connor McMichael and Aliaksei Protas take the next step in their development.

He found an almost unprecedented level of success with each of these players. Chychrun recorded the first 20-goal season of his career, while Dubois recorded a career-high 66 points.

Protas went from scoring six goals in 2023-24 to tallying 30 in two fewer games, while McMichael jumped from 18 goals and 15 assists to 26 goals and 31 assists.

These players all helped the Capitals climb to the top of the Eastern Conference with a 51-22-9 record and 111 points despite missing Ovechkin to a broken leg for over a month in November.

No single player found greater success than Ovechkin himself, who scored 44 goals in 65 games of his age-39 season to beat out Wayne Gretzky as the NHL's all-time leading goalscorer. Carbery worked with Ovechkin to make sure the record-tying goal No. 895 wouldn't come on an empty-netter.

The successful coaching of both young and veteran players helped turn the Capitals into a Stanley Cup contender while making Carbery a Jack Adams finalist in his second season as an NHL head coach.

Although they were knocked out in the second round of the playoffs by the Carolina Hurricanes, the Caps far exceeded expectations during the 2024-25 campaign.

Carbery joins Bryan Murray, Bruce Boudreau and Barry Trotz as the fourth Capitals head coach to win the Jack Adams Award.