{"id":174143,"date":"2025-09-28T02:08:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T02:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/174143\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T02:08:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T02:08:08","slug":"capitals-name-patrick-wellar-interim-assistant-coach-hire-brent-thompson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/174143\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitals Name Patrick Wellar Interim Assistant Coach, Hire Brent Thompson"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Capitals have promoted Patrick Wellar to their NHL coaching staff on an interim basis, Bailey Johnson of The Washington Post reports<\/a>. It will be his first NHL role after spending the past several years working as an assistant for Washington\u2019s AHL affiliate in Hershey.<\/p>\n

Wellar will ensure the Capitals maintain a four-person bench staff to begin the campaign. Assistant Mitch Love, who primarily works with the team\u2019s defensemen, was placed on leave two weeks ago<\/a> pending the results of a league investigation into an off-ice incident involving his personal conduct that predated his time with the organization.<\/p>\n

The 41-year-old Wellar will now do the same, Johnson said. While going out of one\u2019s way to name an interim head coach during a short-term absence isn\u2019t uncommon, uprooting an assistant from an AHL affiliate is an indication that the club doesn\u2019t expect Love to return anytime soon.<\/p>\n

Wellar is entering his eighth year in the organization, all of which have been spent in his everyday assistant role with Hershey. In doing so, he\u2019s been a part of one of the best-run development ladders in the league regarding team success. The Bears won back-to-back Calder Cups in 2023 and 2024 and haven\u2019t finished the regular season with a sub-.500 record during his tenure.<\/p>\n

The Saskatchewan native also spent six years of his playing career in the Caps organization with AHL Hershey and ECHL South Carolina from 2008-14. He won a Calder Cup while on Hershey\u2019s blue line in 2010, appearing in all 21 postseason games alongside future NHL fixtures\u00a0John Carlson<\/a>,\u00a0Jay Beagle<\/a>, Karl Alzner<\/a>, and\u00a0Mathieu Perreault<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to Johnson, the Caps have also named a replacement for the replacement. Veteran coach Brent Thompson<\/a> \u2013 the father of Sabres star Tage Thompson<\/a> \u2013 will step in to cover Wellar\u2019s responsibilities with Hershey. The 54-year-old is a former ECHL Coach of the Year and spent 10 years as the bench boss for AHL Bridgeport in the Islanders organization in two separate stints between 2011 and 2023. He spent the past two seasons as an assistant under Greg Cronin in Anaheim but was not retained by the Ducks for the 2025-26 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Capitals have promoted Patrick Wellar to their NHL coaching staff on an interim basis, Bailey Johnson of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,113226,98011,575,113227,85,4791],"class_list":["post-174143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-brent-thompson","tag-mitch-love","tag-nhl","tag-patrick-wellar","tag-sports","tag-washington-capitals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}