Washington Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery is in rare company after winning the 2025 Jack Adams Award for the league's best coach. He has done something that no other coach in history has done and he may not be done collecting hardware.
Carbery is the only head coach to win Coach of the Year in the NHL, AHL, and ECHL. With that said, he still has many years of coaching left and his best years are still to come.
Capitals, Carbery a perfect fit
On May 30, 2023, Carbery was named Capitals head coach and guided the team to a second wild-card finish, resulting in a sweep by the Presidents Trophy-winning New York Rangers. He did not give up, though, as he slowly developed Washington into serious playoff contenders.
This season, Washington finished the 2024-25 season with a 51-22-9 record, good for 111 points and first place in the Metropolitan Division. The Capitals won the division for the 13th time in franchise history: nine in the Southeast Division and four in the Metropolitan Division.
The lasting result was a second-round exit to the Carolina Hurricanes, who won the series 4 games to 1, despite finishing 12 points behind the Capitals in the regular season.
Carbery's previous success
While behind the bench of the American Hockey League's (AHL) Hershey Bears, he would win the Louis A.R. Pieri Memorial Award for the league's best head coach for the 2020-21 season. The honor came in a shortened season due to COVID-19. Hershey would finish in first place in the North Division with a 24-7-2 record and a .768 winning percentage,
Carbery previously captured the John Brophy Award as ECHL Coach of the Year for the 2013-14 season while behind the bench for the South Carolina Stingrays. The Stingrays finished the season with a 43-23-2-4 record, finishing in first place in the South Division. They would go on to lose to the Wheeling Nailers in a first round sweep.
Carbery's first Jack Adams Award comes via 81 first-place votes out of 103 ballots that were cast. He received 19 second-place votes, two third-place votes and 406 voting points. Winnipeg Jets coach Scott Arniel finished second in the voting with 249 points, and Montreal Canadians Martin St. Louis was third with 66 points.
Carbery is only the fourth head coach in franchise history to win such an award. The others include Barry Trotz (2015-16), Bruce Boudreau (2007-08), and Bryan Murray (1983-84).