Spencer Carbery was officially announced to be the 2025 Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s Coach of the Year on Saturday. Carbery earned the award in just his second year as a full-time NHL coach, leading the Washington Capitals to a first-place finish in the Metropolitan Division and Eastern Conference.
The 43-year-old bench boss is the first to ever win Coach of the Year in the NHL, AHL, and ECHL — all three of North America’s top professional leagues. Carbery sat down with Caps Radio’s Katie Florio to discuss his most recent trophy victory on the latest episode of the Afternoon ReCAP.
“Yeah, in the moment, I was in shock and pretty speechless,” Carbery said. “And then you look at the award, the trophy, and it’s just very, very humbling. You look at some of the names and some of the coaches that have won that award in the past, and then you start to think about just how grateful and fortunate I am to be in this organization, to be coaching this team. It’s a pretty incredible honor.”
Carbery was the sixth Capitals head coach since the award was first instituted in 1973-74 to be named a finalist and the first since Barry Trotz (2016) to win the trophy. He is the fourth Capitals bench boss in franchise history to earn the honor, joining Trotz, Bruce Boudreau (2008), and Bryan Murray (1984).
The NHL is presenting its various end-of-season awards differently this year, handing them out to winners personally before the award show airs on Thursday, June 12. Carbery received his via a surprise reveal from members of his family during a fake season recap interview with Monumental Sports Network’s Joe Beninati.
“Yeah, there were a lot of people in on it, so I’ve still got some conversations to have with them about keeping some [secrets], but it was good,” Carbery said. “Basically, I was under the impression that we were doing an end-of-the-year sort of segment at Monumental Sports downtown on air and went to the studio, Joe B., and we were just sort of walking through some of the highlights of the season, some of my impressions of the season, and then I turned, and there was a video playing that was more centered around the guys standing behind the bench and less with the players, and then I sort of knew something was up in it.
“Then the gentleman from the Hall of Fame came in with the Jack Adams trophy and my family, my kids, wife Casey, and then my dad, stepmom, mom, stepdad, my brother, in-laws, and that was pretty special. It just made the moment, and hearing that and all the emotions you go through them, but being able to hug your loved ones and sharing that special moment that I’ll never forget.”
Carbery’s coaching journey began in the ECHL with the South Carolina Stingrays, where he played for two seasons before transitioning to the bench. He then spent time in the OHL with the Saginaw Spirit, AHL with the Providence Bruins and Hershey Bears, and finally the NHL with the Toronto Maple Leafs before being hired by the Capitals.
Many of the names and faces from his time in some of those prior organizations sent congratulatory messages to Carbery on Saturday.
“I think about that all the time, of just how incredibly grateful I am for all the different breaks that I’ve gotten along the way, meaning somebody taking a chance on you, or somebody mentoring you, or somebody helping you become a better coach or maybe hire you when that was against the norm and I had not coached in that league yet,” Carbery said. “So all those different people, and a lot of them were in that video of the Jared Bednar’s of the world, Cail MacLean, who hired me as a first coach, Robbie Concannon from the South Carolina Stingrays, Bryan Helmer from the Hershey Bears, and then obviously this organization.
“So, along the way of the last 15 years of coaching, it feels like a long, long time, and there’s been a lot of different stops along the way. I just feel so blessed that I’ve been able to work with so many great people and so many people that have helped me. And I think that’s where my mind goes to when you get recognized individually for something like this. There’s just so many people that are the reason why.”
After leading the Capitals to an improbable playoff run in his debut season in DC, Carbery and his team outperformed expectations again, winning 50 games in a season for the first time since the 2016-17 campaign. Several of the team’s players had career-best years, including new acquisitions such as Pierre-Luc Dubois and Jakob Chychrun, as well as younger players like Aliaksei Protas and Connor McMichael.
When the Capitals finished off the Montreal Canadiens in their first-round series, Carbery also became the first Caps coach to win a playoff series since Trotz led them to the 2018 Stanley Cup.
“This team has been so good and had such a strong foundation for so many years,” Carbery said. “So, me coming in, wasn’t trying to reinvent the wheel or bring all these crazy ideas and that. It was more to just be myself and basically bring the group back together with a lot of different new pieces now, getting a little bit younger, some young players coming from Hershey, some players coming from some different organizations, and blending that in and bringing it to what was already here and what already had been created.
“The last two years the leadership and the core group that has been here for a long, long time, for them to accept me, want to be coached, and be totally bought into what we were trying to do, and them then to lead by example and go into the locker room and get everybody on the same page with how hard and how detailed we needed to play every night. I’ll be forever grateful to O, John Carlson, Tom Wilson, TJ Oshie, Nick Backstrom.”
To cap off his interview with Florio, Carbery was asked to offer some advice to his younger self. Instead of focusing on anything related to hockey coaching, he became introspective about the people who have enabled him to achieve the sort of success that led to the 2025 Jack Adams Award.
“Honestly, this is non-hockey advice because I think it’s just as important – make sure that your support system at home understands how much you appreciate them and understands how much you value them,” Carbery said. “Because what’s required to be a head coach at any level that I’ve been at, whether it’s in the ECHL, the AHL, the OHL – the season is a grind. Sometimes we just get caught in the work, and you’re spending hours and hours and hours, days off in the rink, all this time there.
“I think what I learned with a lot of help early on is when you’re home and when you’re with your support system and your significant other, make sure that you’re present and you appreciate everything that they do when you aren’t there because your household does not run when you’re at the rink for 16 hours a day or you’re on a 10-day road trip around the Midwest. It’s so important to appreciate your support system at home.”
Carbery and the Capitals will head into the 2025-26 season looking to improve on their second-round exit from the 2025 playoffs. With the reigning NHL Coach of the Year behind the bench, they’re likely positioned well to do just that.
