WASHINGTON, D.C. (WCIV) — Former South Carolina Stingrays player and coach Spencer Carbery won the Jack Adams Award Saturday after his second season coaching the NHL’s Washington Capitals, making him the first coach ever to win coach of the year awards in the NHL, AHL, and ECHL.
Carbery played for the Stingrays in his last two seasons as a player before joining the coaching staff, eventually being named the team’s sixth head coach in 2011. He won the John Brophy Coach of the Year Award in 2013-14 with the Rays.
He left South Carolina to coach for brief stints in the OHL and AHL before returning to the Capitals farm system to coach the AHL’s Hershey Bears, where he won the Louis A.R. Pieri Memorial Award for coach of the year in 2020-21. In 2021 he worked as an assistant coach for the Toronto Maple Leafs in the NHL before being named head coach of the Caps in May 2023.
The Jack Adams Award is given annually to the head coach “adjudged to have contributed the most to his team’s success” and is voted by members of the NHL Broadcasters Association.
The 43-year-old guided Washington to a 51-22-9 record in 2024-25 as they finished first in the Metropolitan Division and Eastern Conference and second in the NHL with 111 points, a 20 point improvement on his first season behind the bench.