The Washington Capitals are still in the thick of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs, but teams are already circling one of their assistant coaches as a potential candidate for their head coaching vacancies.
Mitch Love, whom the Capitals hired to Spencer Carbery’s staff before the 2023-24 season, is reportedly “generating interest” with six NHL teams still seeking a bench boss for next year. The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun wrote about the rumors around Love in the latest installment of his “NHL rumblings” column.
“Assistant coach Mitch Love, a two-time AHL coach of the year, is generating interest,” LeBrun writes. “We’ll see where that goes once the Caps’ season is over.”
After the New York Rangers hired Mike Sullivan and the Anaheim Ducks hired Joel Quenneville, there are still six head-coaching spots open throughout the league with the Philadelphia Flyers, Boston Bruins, Pittsburgh Penguins, Chicago Blackhawks, Seattle Kraken, and Vancouver Canucks.
Love has guided the Capitals’ defense corps for two years after the Caps lured him away from the Calgary Flames’ AHL affiliate. The 40-year-old former AHL enforcer (he fought a career high 34 times in 2008-09) led the Stockton Heat and Calgary Wranglers to a combined 96-33-11 record from 2021 through 2023, winning the Louis A.R. Pieri Memorial Award as Coach of the Year both seasons.
His two seasons as an AHL bench boss are Love’s lone experience leading a pro team, but he was a bench boss at the junior level for the WHL’s Saskatoon Blades for three years. He also spent six seasons as an assistant coach with the WHL’s Everett Silvertips and two years as an assistant for Team Canada at the World Juniors (2020, 2021).
If Love were to only last two years as an assistant behind the bench in DC, his journey to leading an NHL team would closely mirror Carbery’s. Carbery, a former Canadian major junior coach with the OHL’s Saginaw Spirit, turned his own successful head coaching stint in the AHL with the Hershey Bears into an NHL assistant job with the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2021.
Carbery lasted just two seasons in Toronto before the Capitals brought him back into the organization to replace Peter Laviolette. The 43-year-old is the favorite to win the Jack Adams Award as NHL Coach of the Year after leading the Caps to the Eastern Conference’s top record.
In his article, LeBrun also mentions that Kirk Muller, another Capitals assistant, would be open to a head-coaching role after previously leading the Carolina Hurricanes for three years (2011-2014). Muller leads the Capitals’ power play and is responsible for the team’s forwards.
