The Washington Capitals\u2019 \u201crebuild\u201d is officially over. Head coach Spencer Carbery believes the 2024-25 season was proof enough that the club made enough changes in a single year to contend for a championship moving forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think last year changed the trajectory,\u201d he told Virginia Golfer\u2019s Chris Lang in an interview for the magazine\u2019s August edition<\/a>. \u201cWe went from having to rebuild and get a lot younger and wait a few years to become a Stanley Cup contender to making some moves to where we felt like we could compete a lot quicker and be a Stanley Cup contender that we and the outside world anticipated two years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n The Caps finished the campaign atop the Eastern Conference with 111 points and won their first playoff series since lifting the Stanley Cup in 2018. Despite the team eventually falling in the second round to the Carolina Hurricanes, Carbery thinks the team is set up nicely for the future.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s exciting. We still have a lot of work to do,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe know that we still have to build through our prospects and our young players and develop them because they\u2019re going to be a key part of our future. But we also have a solid foundation with the players we brought in last offseason and the players we\u2019ve already developed inside our organization.\u201d<\/p>\n Carbery was awarded the Jack Adams Award as the NHL\u2019s coach of the year in just his second season at the helm in DC. He inherited a solid core of foundational players like captain Alex Ovechkin, Tom Wilson and John Carlson but the roster owned the second-oldest average age in the league<\/a> in his first campaign. Getting the opportunity to develop some of the club\u2019s top prospects on NHL ice last year is something Carbery credits for speeding up the rebuild.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter my first year, where we sort of squeaked into the playoffs, the narrative was that we were going to have to go through a rebuild after 2018 and with our veteran players getting to an age where they were going to retire,\u201d he explained. \u201cI think with making the playoffs, and some of the moves we made last summer, with the draft picks we had and guys like Ryan Leonard coming in, the development of Aliaksei Protas and Connor McMichael, the ability for John Carlson and Ovi and Tom Wilson to still play at a high level, all of a sudden we were able to compete at a really high level and play at the level of some of the best teams in the National Hockey League.\u201d<\/p>\n The season revolved, in part, around Ovechkin\u2019s chase to pass Wayne Gretzky as the NHL\u2019s greatest goal scorer. Carbery said he and the team found a balance in being motivated by the chase and staying focused on the bigger picture at the same time.<\/p>\n \u201cYou had to pinch yourself at times through the season,\u201d he described. \u201cYou would get into practice mode, game mode, into your daily responsibilities. Every once in a while someone would remind you, or you would sit back and you would think about it. And you\u2019d say, \u2018Oh my gosh, we are witnessing one of the greatest accomplishments in sports history, in the moment.\u2019 You would just have to shake your head and go, \u2018Wow, this is incredible.\u2019 Then you would go back to work, to the next game, the next practice, the daily grind.\u201d<\/p>\n With Ovechkin now just three goals short of becoming the first in league history to record 900, Carbery and the Caps will be looking to ride more of that momentum through the 2025-26 season and build upon their renewed success.<\/p>\n