Latest news with #PierreLucDubois
Washington Post
05-07-2025
- Sport
- Washington Post
The Caps look mostly the same, but are still ‘excited' for what's to come
As the dust settles on the busiest part of the NHL offseason — the draft and the most active stretch of free agency — the Washington Capitals are mostly the same team they were a month ago. That was largely the plan, General Manager Chris Patrick said in May, and Patrick stuck to his word. A year after the Capitals went big by trading for center Pierre-Luc Dubois, winger Andrew Mangiapane, defenseman Jakob Chychrun and goaltender Logan Thompson while adding defenseman Matt Roy and forwards Brandon Duhaime and Taylor Raddysh in free agency, it was a quiet week around Washington's offices.
New York Times
07-06-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Washington Capitals' Spencer Carbery wins Jack Adams Award as NHL's best coach
Spencer Carbery, who led the Washington Capitals to the highest points total in the Eastern Conference while navigating Alex Ovechkin's pursuit of the all-time goals record, has won the Jack Adams Award for the 2024-25 season, the NHL announced Saturday. The award, which goes to 'the NHL coach adjudged to have contributed the most to his team's success,' is voted upon by the NHL Broadcasters' Association. Scott Arniel of the Winnipeg Jets and Martin St. Louis of the Montreal Canadiens were the other two finalists. Spencer Carbery got quite the surprise from his family after winning the Jack Adams Award. 🥹 Watch the #NHLAwards on June 12 at 6p ET on @NHL_On_TNT and @Sportsnet before Game 4 of the #StanleyCup Final! — NHL (@NHL) June 7, 2025 Washington went 51-22-9 with 111 points and eliminated St. Louis' Canadiens in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Carolina Hurricanes, in turn, knocked out Washington in the second round. While the timing of his team's exit was something of a disappointment, Carbery's second season on the job was an unquestioned success — as was his first, when he took a roster that scored the fifth-fewest goals in the NHL and helped coax it into the postseason despite a minus-37 goal differential. Advertisement In 2024-25, the situation was a bit different. The Capitals added brand-name players like Pierre-Luc Dubois, Jakob Chychrun and Andrew Mangiapane while gearing up for Ovechkin's record chase to enter its final stages. Carbery got the best out of the additions; effectively folded in younger players like Aliaksei Protas and Connor McMichael; and, of course, found a way to optimize Ovechkin. That was no simple task: Ovechkin, even in his twilight, is a remarkable goal-scorer, but accounting for his age and limitations at five-on-five would seem a challenge. Carbery threaded that needle on the ice while also handling the drama, chaos and pageantry that mounted as Ovechkin closed in on Wayne Gretzky's record 895 career goals. Making sure that the chase came in a winning environment was an organizational priority, and Carbery played a huge part in bringing that to pass. 'For us, especially as coaches, we go to the hundreds and hundreds of hours that we've been trying to figure out ways to get him the next goal. And that's behind the scenes — that's frustration, that's happiness, that's long hours of like, 'Oh my gosh, we've got to figure this power play out,' Carbery said after Ovechkin broke the record on April 6. 'So there's just so much behind the scenes that goes into this game and trying to help set players and your team up for success. So as a staff, when this happens and you've been working 80-hour weeks for the last two years to try to help get the next goal, it's a pretty special moment for us to celebrate. Obviously, it's an individual achievement, but for us to help him get there and see it actually come to fruition, you can't describe the feeling of when that puck goes in. And I will tell this story for the rest of my life, standing on the bench.' Carbery, 43, is the youngest coach to win the award since Dan Bylsma, then 41, with the 2010-11 Pittsburgh Penguins. He coached Washington's AHL affiliate in Hershey, Pa., for three seasons (2018-21) before working on Sheldon Keefe's staff with the Toronto Maple Leafs from 2021-23. Carbery took over as the Capitals' head coach ahead of the 2023-24 season, replacing Peter Laviolette.
New York Times
07-05-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
The Capitals are searching for answers. Where should they start?
WASHINGTON — Sometimes, the final score isn't indicative of the hockey that preceded it. We saw that in action on Tuesday night, when the Carolina Hurricanes needed overtime to beat the Washington Capitals 2-1, despite Carolina's full-scale dominance in basically every facet of the game outside of goaltending. So, it made sense that the next-day vibes were a little different on both sides. We'll start with the team that needs to, uh, make some adjustments. 'It's a lot of stuff,' Capitals coach Spencer Carbery said. '(To) summarize it and put it (in) probably in as basic terms as I possibly can, we can't defend for the amount of time that we defended last night, be under attack for as long as we were, and expect to have success in this series. But we understand that Carolina and what they do, they're going to control play for significant portions of the game. (Ninety-four) shot attempts, it was a little high.' Indeed, a 94-34 edge in shot attempts is suboptimal for the team that has 34. In their regular-season games against each other, Carolina controlled about 60 percent of the shot attempts; that's passable for Washington. On Tuesday, it was up to about 74 percent; that is not. An enormous chunk of that disparity was built with Pierre-Luc Dubois, Tom Wilson and Connor McMichael on the ice for Washington. Given how well that line performed together in the regular season, watching it lose on shot attempts 23-2 and scoring chances 11-1 was almost startling. Much of that also came with Washington defensemen John Carlson and Jakob Chychrun on the ice. Carolina's top line (Sebastian Aho between Andrei Svechnikov and Jackson Blake) basically did as it pleased. Bad breakouts by the defensemen, bad puck management from the forwards when they managed to make it to the offensive zone — everything went wrong for Washington, and no player combo was more responsible than Carlson-Chychrun-Dubois-Wilson-McMichael. Carbery said, unsurprisingly, that he'd consider lineup changes for Thursday's Game 2. 'When you go through something like that, it makes you look at different options,' he said. 'So that goes into systematic personnel, line combination, D-pair — all of it we'll talk about, break down, and then figure out what we feel like is the best course of action for any type of alteration in (the lineup).' It's worth noting that the Chychrun-Carlson pairing is partially in place due to Martin Fehérváry's season-ending injury, and that Chychrun wound up seeing 5 minutes, 40 seconds with Matt Roy (Fehérváry's typical partner) down the stretch in Game 1. Carlson, meanwhile, had regular-season success with Rasmus Sandin. If Carbery is dedicated to keeping Trevor van Riemsdyk and Alex Alexeyev as his third pair, Chychrun-Roy and Carlson-Sandin as the top four would make some sense. As for the forwards, Aliaksei Protas would seem like a candidate to rejoin the top six. He scored Washington's only goal in Game 1 — and also played a part in setting up Carolina's first, when he put a puck in Alexeyev's feet deep in the defensive zone. It didn't work out. Still, Protas is a potential difference-maker with a track record of success with Dubois and Wilson. 'We need to put more pressure on their defensemen,' Capitals center Nic Dowd said. 'As you saw early in the second, we put pressure on their defensemen, they started coughing up pucks and then we had opportunities. We just didn't do enough of that. 'It's not saying we're going to have 94 shot attempts like the Carolina Hurricanes. I don't think that's our game. But I think at the same point, we have to do a better job of stressing their defensemen in the offensive zone.' Whatever Carbery chooses to do, a replay is not an option. 'That game's over now. We've moved on,' Dowd said. 'Like, we can learn from it, no question, but you can't sulk on it.' The flip side The Hurricanes, meanwhile, deserve credit for sticking to their plan. They've lost their share of playoff games despite controlling the run of play, but on Tuesday, process led to results. 'I think last night there was just a sense of, I don't know, calmness or what it was, but I felt like nobody was panicked,' Hurricanes winger Jordan Martinook said. 'You just kind of felt like it was going to come. Sometimes it's hard to explain those feelings. But it didn't feel like anybody was frustrated on the bench or anything. 'And I think we've played this way long enough, that you know you're going to kind of create a break or make your breaks by the way you're playing. And I felt like last night was kind of a prime example of how you stick with what we do and then you'll get rewarded for it.' Hurricanes injury update Hurricanes fourth-line center Mark Jankowski, who left the game in the second period, is 'definitely better' and will likely be a game-time decision for Game 2 on Thursday night, Brind'Amour said. After Jankowski left, Carolina basically ran three lines, with William Carrier and Eric Robinson each only logging about three more minutes of ice time. (Photo of Washington's Matt Roy and Carolina's Sean Walker: Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)
