Spencer Carbery praises Capitals video coaches after successful offside challenge: ‘That’s arguably a game-changing challenge right there’

The Washington Capitals had plenty of heroes in their 7-3 win over the New York Rangers Saturday afternoon, including two major contributors who never touched the ice.

When Rangers forward Will Cuylle appeared to bring New York within one midway through the second period, Capitals video coaches Emily Engel-Natzke and Brett Leonhardt came up big, telling head coach Spencer Carbery the play might have been offside.

Carbery took his time out to buy the video coaches another minute to review the footage before ultimately calling a coach’s challenge. After reviewing the play for more than four minutes, on-ice officials and the NHL Situation determined that Brett Berard had put the Rangers offside and overturned the goal.

Sam Carrick scored minutes later to make the score 3-2, but the Capitals never gave up their lead after the successful challenge, defeating the Rangers 7-4.

Carbery shouted out both Engel-Natzke and Leonhardt in his locker room speech after the win.

Carbery: That f***ing challenge from our video department, Emily and Brett,”

(Two players yell “Atta boy Em!” and “Beauty!”)

Carbery: That’s arguably a game-changing challenge right there to get more time and get the angle that they needed, so that was f***ing huge.

Dylan Strome credited the Caps’ video team for spotting something even the players on the ice missed at the time, erasing what could have been a big momentum swing in New York’s favor.

Speaking to the media postgame, Carbery went into more detail on the decision to call a time out and make a challenge , crediting his video coaches once again.

“Brett and Emily deserve a ton of credit for that challenge,” he said. “I always tell them if you need more angles, I’ll use our time out to buy more time. Because [the officials are] rushing me in that moment. And saying ‘You’ve got to decide, you’ve got to decide, you’ve got to decide.’ And so they didn’t have the angle that they needed, so we needed a little bit more time.”

Carbery explained that the team couldn’t get a clear view of Berard from the camera at the blue line but the time out allowed them to wait for more angles of the play. The coaching staff found the angle they needed thanks to a camera located on the scoreboard.

“The process is really, someone could write a small dissertation on the process of this and how it works,” he said. “And so we’re waiting for different angles from the TV crews to give us the one overhead that is basically from the score clock and it has the entire blue line with feet and puck. And that was the shot that we needed and they gave it to us and it just showed [the offside player]…once they showed that on the broadcast and it came to our feet, we knew right away that it was coming back.”

Though the Capitals have lost a series of goals to video review this season, those largely came from other teams choosing to challenge. Washington has made just two challenges in 2024-25: the successful challenge against the Rangers and an unsuccessful challenge for goaltender interference against Utah on November 18. Last season, the Caps won 11 of their 14 challenges, including 10 of 11 offside challenges.

Between Washington’s time out and the officials’ lengthy review, the final call took plenty of time to determine. But for the Capitals, that complicated process paid off.

“It is fascinating. There’s so many things that people don’t know about what goes on in that and what angles that we have and have access to.”