Caps Open Season with "Something to Prove"

Over the 16 seasons in which Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom have been Capitals teammates, the team and the organization has established a high standard of success. Washington has been a playoff team for 14 of those 16 seasons, but the second of those two postseason misses came this past spring.

As they get set to embark upon the upcoming 2023-24 campaign with Friday’s season opener against Pittsburgh, the Caps are collectively driven and determined to return to the Stanley Cup playoffs. Including Ovechkin and Backstrom, Washington’s ’23-24 roster still holds six remaining core members of the team’s 2018 Stanley Cup championship, the high-water mark of nearly a half century’s worth of NHL hockey in the District.

Along with that remaining core of six players with Caps’ Cup rings, Washington’s roster will feature an injection of youth that is not limited to the playing roster. The Caps’ coaching staff features a quartet of new faces, the most staff turnover since the summer of 2014, which marked the only previous playoff miss in the Ovechkin-Backstrom era.

Spencer Carbery was named the 20^th coach in Caps’ franchise history in late May, and the 41-year-old native of Victoria, B.C. will open the season as the youngest head coach in the NHL, although Carbery is far from being the youngest coach on his own staff. Newly hired assistant coach Mitch Love is 39, and holdover assistants Brett Leonhardt and Emily Engel-Natzke are both younger than Carbery as well.

In addition to Love, whose area of responsibility is the Washington blueline corps, the Caps also hired veteran NHL coach Kirk Muller to oversee the team’s power play unit. Muller and returning assistant Scott Allen – the team’s penalty killing guru – will share the responsibilities of coaching the club’s forward group.

For the first time in Washington’s franchise history, the Caps will also have a full-time, dedicated skills coach. The Caps hired former Columbus assistant Kenny McCudden to establish that role.

The Caps’ core of Cup holdovers is – like the rest of us – aging; at 29, Tom Wilson is the youngest of the group. But Washington has started the process of surrounding and augmenting that remaining core group with younger players, adding 20-somethings such as Dylan Strome, Sonny Milano and Rasmus Sandin since the start of last season.

In this era of the flat salary cap – an era that has lasted half a decade now – it’s been even more difficult to keep successful teams together. During that span, the Caps got creative in finding ways of improving their team outside the realm of the salary cap. When many other clubs cut their scouting staffs during the pandemic, the Caps actively hired new scouts who would be able to get to areas of the globe where the team’s established staff could not get to because of travel restrictions.

Washington kept several of those scouts on an expanded staff in the years since, and the team has started to accumulate a cluster of young and talented prospects. Recent drafts have brought the likes of Vincent Iorio (2021), Ivan Miroshnichenko, Ryan Chesley and Alexander Suzdalev (2022) and most recently, Ryan Leonard and Andrew Cristall (2023) into the fold.

This summer, the Caps went hard and spent hard to fill out and assemble their coaching staff. Carbery, Love and McCudden were all in high demand, with suitors from multiple teams. Washington successfully reeled them all in, using dollars and term to shake off those other suitors when necessary.

Carbery’s coaching career started in the Caps’ organization over a decade ago; he began as an assistant with South Carolina, Washington’s ECHL affiliate. Carbery later ascended to the head coaching position with the Caps’ AHL Hershey affiliate, and although he twice departed the organization for coaching jobs elsewhere, the Caps kept tabs on him all along.

“I think we have a relationship; we have a history,” says Caps’ president and general manager Brian MacLellan. “We didn’t want to lose him to Toronto, but in the meantime, we kept track of him in Toronto. We talked to [former Leafs’ GM] Kyle [Dubas] about him, asked how he’s doing, and you could see the progress in their power play, and you see the success of their power play.

“We were monitoring his development and we had a good feel for him. And another club reached out to me after his first year in Toronto. They were thinking of hiring him, and they asked me about him. And I said, ‘Two years as an assistant would be great for him, to prepare him to be a head coach.’ I thought the timing worked out perfect for us, given what we had going on and where he was at development wise. But yeah, he was our number one guy.”

Even in the midst of training camp – the most grueling part of the hockey season for most – players were exuberant when asked about their new coach.

“He has a lot of energy,” says Caps’ winger T.J. Oshie of the new bench boss. “The way he sees any team having success – the way that you move the puck, the attention to detail – is in line with how some of our higher end players feel. I think you’ll see us play a little differently with the puck this year, just based on some of the conversations that we’ve had. But our mentality is going to change a little bit and his energy is going to be a change of pace for us in a positive way.

“It’s very exciting even for me as an older guy. I’ve been through a lot of coaches, and you always come in wanting to prove yourself with a new coach. That won’t change, but I’m super excited about Carbs and the rest of our coaching staff; how things will change and how they go about their business. It’s a very exciting time for me, and I’m ready to play in their systems and get rolling.”

“Whenever you have a new coach and a new staff, there is always a breath of fresh air into the room,” says Washington winger Tom Wilson. “Carbs comes in and he’s hungry, he’s passionate. You feel the excitement when you talk to him. Obviously, it’s early, but you feel the genuine place that he’s coming from and you feel that genuine approach from him where he just wants individuals and the team to succeed and to do better. He brings an energy to the group that’s exciting.

“The first impression is that he’s hungry to move this thing in the right direction. He is building genuine relationships with the players, and he’s a good person. That’s always a good start.”

Carbery favors and preaches playing with pace, and he is seen as a coach whose style is more in synch with the type of game his players like to play, want to play and are suited to play.

“Yeah, I think so,” says Caps’ defenseman John Carlson. “I think we’ve always been kind of a center ice team, and I think we’ve gotten away from that a little bit over the last few years. I think the biggest thing is pushing the puck up the ice as quick as we can. And utilizing the middle I think allows us to move it faster, get it quicker, and to attack more and from better position.

“As a [defenseman], no matter where you are, if you’re in your zone or you’re on a line rush against, or if you’re on a regroup against, when that center is in the middle of the ice with the puck, it’s more difficult. And I just feel like we didn’t maybe try as much to get it there, or we didn’t do a good enough job of getting it there in the last few years. That’s a big factor that we’re trying to implement more, and I think that’s helping everyone out.”

Like Carbery, Love never played in the NHL. But also like Carbery, he began coaching before his 30^th birthday and his star has ascended swiftly. Love has spent just the last two seasons coaching as high as the AHL, but his teams won a combined 96 games in those two seasons, and he became just the third coach in that League’s history to win consecutive Louis A.R. Pieri Memorial Award as the circuit’s best coach. Love is the only coach ever to win the award in each of his first two seasons in the League.

“He has had success and then he had success with Team Canada, too,” says MacLellan of Love. “When you get chosen to do that and you’re already doing well at the AHL level, that puts you on the radar. I think it was more a matter of what was going to happen with Calgary, and if they were going to hire him. And then there were several teams waiting and wanting to interview him if Calgary wasn’t going to promote him to the head coaching job.

“We kind of kept in contact with everybody, and then we interviewed him, and we got him and Spencer to talk – which was probably the most important thing – to see where they were both at philosophically and how they might complement each other. He is a good young coach who has had success, and who is ready to go to the next level. And I think they hit it off pretty well, which helped us in our ability to sign him.”

The second player chosen overall in the 1984 NHL Entry Draft, Muller enjoyed a long and prosperous NHL career as a player. His 19-year playing career as a durable, two-way center included a Stanley Cup with Montreal in 1993, the last Cup won by any Canadian-based team. Muller finished second on that Habs team with 94 points, and he was second in playoff scoring that season as well. He finished with 357 goals and 959 points in 1,349 games in the NHL, two more games than Ovechkin has played in 18 seasons.

A few years after his playing career ended, Muller broke into coaching as an assistant with the Canadiens. Since 2006-07, he has been employed in the NHL for at least part of every season as an assistant, associate or head coach, so his knowledge of the League and its personnel will be a valuable asset on what is a young Washington staff.

“He's got the right personality to fit with Carbs and Mitch, and with the players too,” says MacLellan of Muller. “He builds relationships; he has a reputation for that. He gets along with star players; he knows how to relate to them. And he gets along with bottom six guys, because he’s experienced both [as a player].

“Because of his experience, because of how many coaches he’s worked with and his head coaching experience, he’s going to be a good voice of reason for our whole staff. It’s a really good fit, I think. And our first power play is veteran guys that have been around, and I think he’s got street cred from his playing career and coaching for a very long time. It’s a natural fit for everybody. And I think it’s good for him to work with young guys, too. He’s worked with older guys quite a bit, veteran older guys. But where he’s at in his career, I think it’s fun for him to be around young coaches that are you know, getting better and learning the League.”

McCudden comes to Washington at an opportune time. His primary areas of focus – skills and skating – will always be in demand in the NHL, but the Caps are starting to trend younger on their roster and could certainly use his expertise as they try to develop some of their younger players while keeping the aging core as sharp as possible in those areas.

McCudden spent several seasons with AHL Chicago as a skating and skills coach, and he comes to the Caps after spending the last eight seasons as an assistant with Columbus, where he worked under three different head coaches.

“He’s got a great reputation,” says MacLellan of McCudden. “You know, it’s hard to find a guy like him. We’ve been poking around the skills coach thing for quite a while. We had a part time guy for a number of years and had been trying to figure out ways to address that. And I think everybody knows Kenny and what he’s done, and his reputation. The players have a lot of respect for him, and the coaches, too.

“When his name popped up as possibly being available, we started conversations with him; ‘If you're thinking of moving, we have interest.’ We kept it going forward, we interviewed him, Carbs interviewed him, and we talked to a bunch of people [about him]. We just kept trying to be as aggressive as we could to sign him up, and then he agreed to come our way at the end.”

“Kenny is really well connected. He has strong connections to probably five or six organizations that all were interested in hiring him. And I think the opportunity here was attractive to him, given our coaching staff, and he liked the players we have on our team. It worked out great for us in the end.”

In the wake of last season’s disappointing finish, Oshie was one of a few players who noted the need for some skills coaching.

“I think a team like ours could really benefit from some forward thinking as far as practice goes and as far as off ice goes,” Oshie said, this past April. “I’m hearing some rumblings of some of the high-octane teams in the League right now having practices that are more based on speed and skill and skill development, and less of the same skate around and 5-on-0 type of practices.

“Anyone that knows me personally knows that my summer’s skating is based on skill level, reaction time, creativity, and trying things that are extremely hard that you might never do in a game, but they do develop your hand-eye coordination and they develop your ability to make plays that are unpredictable, to adjust to those and to make those unpredictable plays. We play an unpredictable game, and sometimes practice – if it’s the same and if you can do it without thinking – sometimes you’re going to go to games without really having your mind focused and ready to react to things.

“As far as my mind goes, a forward thinker in this game and someone that might really be ahead of the curve, is really using practice time for skill development, to keep that skill at a high level throughout the entire season, and not just at the start of the season when you’re coming from the summer, and you’re playing shinny and trying things that you normally wouldn’t try. And then maybe you use your teaching time more in the classroom and the video room and less on the ice.”

Now that the staff is assembled, and the roster is set, we’re about to find out how well it all meshes together. The incentive for a bounce back season extends throughout the lineup. Collectively, Washington’s long-entrenched 2018 Stanley Cup core is itching to atone for last season’s playoff miss, and the quartet of first-round playoff exits that preceded it. Individually, each also has obvious incentive for the upcoming season.

Forward Aliaksei Protas is aiming to spend the entire season at the NHL level for the first time, as are first-time opening night roster players Matt Phillips and Lucas Johansen. Protas is a jack-of-all-trades who has played all three forward positions and on all four lines during the course of his 91-game NHL career, and he seems likely to man the right side of Dowd’s line at season’s outset.

Phillips and Johansen each have played just three games in the NHL after several seasons as pros. Neither will be content to just make the roster; both players are aiming to establish themselves as full-time NHLers. McMichael, Malenstyn, Protas and Johansen are all coming off the uplifting experience of being integral players for the 2023 Calder Cup champion Hershey Bears.

At 38, Ovechkin needs another standard Ovechkin season to put a dent in the 72-goal deficit that separates him from all-time goals leader Wayne Gretzky (894). Evgeny Kuznetsov is aiming to bounce back from a subpar season, and Oshie, Wilson, Backstrom and Carlson are all seeking a healthier 2023-24 campaign. All of those Cup core players also looking to deliver production that is commensurate with respective résumés and reputations.

Players like Strome, Milano and Sandin are seeking to continue their upward career arcs and aiming to stretch those arcs as high as they might. Like Kuznetsov, Anthony Mantha is aiming for a bounce-back season in what is a contract year for him. And speaking of contract years, off-season additions Joel Edmundson and Max Pacioretty will also be free agents next summer. Both will also open this season on injured reserve, and they’ll will be seeking to earn that next contract whenever they return to the Washington lineup.

Washington’s veteran goaltending tandem of Darcy Kuemper and Charlie Lindgren returns for a second season in the crease, and each had the shortest of possible summers coming into their first season with the team and goalie coach Scott Murray. Having had a fuller summer of rest and conditioning may prove to be beneficial for both goalkeepers.

That leaves the youth brigade, and the Caps are hopeful that the new coaching crew can help the team’s youngest players to reach their fullest potential. Washington’s opening night roster includes eight players aged 25 or younger, the team’s highest total for an opening night roster since it had nine such players at the outset of the 2019-20 season.

The flat salary cap era overlapping with a pandemic has curtailed or impeded development of some of the League’s younger players, and teams are now sometimes pushed into a position where they must continue and then finish that development at the NHL level. Each of those eight Washington players under the age of 25 has some NHL experience, but most are still works in progress as players at this point.

Connor McMichael had an impressive camp and is likely to open the season in the team’s top six. Before an early season injury sidetracked him last season, Beck Malenstyn positioned himself as a fourth-line beast and a good fit on Nic Dowd’s left side on what has been a consistently solid unit for three seasons. Malenstyn figures to be a regular to start this season.

In a parity-laced League in which half the teams miss the playoffs and the margin for error is slim, the Caps know what they’re up against, and they know the standard in the room.

“The guys are definitely pissed off because it’s the first time in forever that we haven’t made the playoffs, and that’s the expectation coming in here every year,” says Dowd. “In this organization, we’ve won so many games since I’ve been here – so the last five years – and everyone expects that we’re going to make the playoffs and we’re going to make a run. And if something unlucky happens in the playoffs, it’s like, ‘Well, we didn’t do our job.’ It’s never been, ‘We need to do our job to make the playoffs.’ Making the playoffs is an expectation that has to be met here.”

Along those lines, there are new words inscribed inside the Caps’ locker room this season: “Something to Prove.” It’s an appropriate three-word phrase, and it applies not only to the players (see above), but also to the staff.

“It was a product of just talking to our guys over the summer,” says Carbery of the team’s ’23-24 slogan. “We have a lot of players – and staff – in a lot of different scenarios, whether you’re Alex Ovechkin, Connor McMichael, Spencer Carbery, Kenny McCudden, Kirk Muller or Mitch Love, we just have a mindset of coming into this year, that we’ve got something to prove, all in different ways, and then collectively as a team, so individually and collectively.

“I just felt like I kept hearing that word and that phrase in different ways, from summer interviews with different guys: ‘I’ve got a lot to prove.’ I just felt like it resonates, and it’s a good reminder every day, because this is going to turn into a grind; it’s going to be day after day and then you get into the dog days and that. It’s just a little phrase to remind you that, ‘Okay, I’ve got to utilize today, because I’ve got a lot to prove. And that’s the end goal, but every day I’m doing things and checking boxes to make sure that I’m proving that.”

Beginning on Oct. 13 when the Penguins waddle into town for the season opener, the Caps will start taking a page from the Bruce Springsteen and Bill Quateman songbooks, looking to prove it all night, night after night, and ideally for much longer than the six-month regular season.

And what will that look like? What’s Carbery’s vision of his team’s identity?

“I think that’s really important,” he says. “I love the question, and that’s where my head thinks all of the time. If you had to ask someone who came to our game, like, ‘What are the Washington Capitals?’ I would hope that there’s a common theme there, and what I’m hoping for is some of the things that I’ve talked about from a competitiveness standpoint, how hard we work, and how difficult we are to play against, like, ‘Gosh, that team backchecks so hard,’ or ‘Gosh, that team really closes your time and space.’

“A hard, competitive team is number one. And the second thing I would hope that say is, ‘Damn, that team is very, very organized. In all three zones, it seems like everybody knows where they should be. They all are on the same page with where the puck is going, they’re never really out of position. That’s a really organized and detailed team.’

“I’ve always as a coach – and that’s going back to when I started – thought that if you walk away from the rink, and whether you’re [in] media, whether you’re a fan, whether you’re an opposing player or opposing coach and you say that, I think you’re going to have a pretty good team.”