{"id":501745,"date":"2026-03-03T19:03:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T19:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/501745\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T19:03:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T19:03:11","slug":"spencer-carbery-expresses-confidence-in-assistant-coach-kirk-muller-as-capitals-power-play-falls-to-second-last-in-nhl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/501745\/","title":{"rendered":"Spencer Carbery expresses confidence in assistant coach Kirk Muller as Capitals power play falls to second-last in NHL"},"content":{"rendered":"

ARLINGTON, VA \u2014 The Washington Capitals are no strangers to power play problems. Since the departures of Nicklas Backstrom, TJ Oshie, and Evgeny Kuznetsov, the Caps have struggled to find success on the man advantage, at points going on month-long droughts<\/a> between goals. Since the 2022-23 season, they\u2019ve succeeded on 20.1 percent of their power play opportunities, ranking 21st in the NHL over that span.<\/p>\n

This season, however, arguably marks a low point in recent memory. The Capitals currently sit second-last in the league in 2025-26 with a 15.5 power play percentage (beating only the Colorado Avalanche, whose 39-10-9 record makes the power play less of a concern), and are on track for the franchise\u2019s worst PP% since 2005-06. Alex Ovechkin<\/a>, who holds the all-time power-play goals record (330) by nearly a 30-goal margin, has had just four tallies up a man this year. The team has not converted in 10 opportunities since returning from the Olympic break. And Washington has allowed eight shorthanded goals against, tied for third-most in the NHL.<\/p>\n

While the Caps know their power play needs to improve, head coach Spencer Carbery believes a complete overhaul this late in the season would do more harm than good.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think two things are really, really important,\u201d he said. \u201cOne is that, at this point in the season, if we just completely (start over), now all of a sudden in the most significant games of the year, you could be trying something that you haven\u2019t used all year long, which is, it\u2019s tough.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, the counter to that would be like, well, why not? Because what\u2019s going on right now isn\u2019t working. And that would lead me to the second point, though, is it\u2019s not about what\u2019s going on in the past. It\u2019s not about our percentage. It\u2019s not about how it looked. We need to approach the power play with a one-game mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the Capitals in such a tight race for a playoff spot, the power play may well decide their fate in both individual contests and on the season. Carbery hopes that focusing on a single game at a time can help prevent mounting frustrations from making the slump worse.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you go two for four, tonight, that could lead us to victory,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd so the short-term memory like a goldfish, however you want to explain it, of just getting our power play group to have a mindset of, \u2018It is a clean slate tonight. We\u2019re going to be the best power play in the league. We\u2019re going to be completely on the same page with every little detail with it. I don\u2019t care what happened in Montreal. I don\u2019t care what\u2019s happened in the last 60 games. I don\u2019t care what our percentage is. It\u2019s a clean slate tonight.\u2019 So trying to get us as mentally strong as possible with, just worry about tonight. If we go two-for-four tonight, it could be the difference in our season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carbery, whose work running the Toronto Maple Leafs\u2019 power play from 2021 to 2023 helped bolster his candidacy for the Capitals\u2019 head coaching job, expressed full confidence in assistant coach Kirk Muller, though he noted that the entire coaching staff contributed to the team\u2019s power play.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all involved in [the power play],\u201d Carbery said. \u201cI\u2019m not going to break down the specifics of who handles each and every responsibility. Kirk runs our power play, does a great job. It\u2019s not a lack of effort, and not a lack of him trying to turn over every rock and find solutions to what\u2019s going on. And so we all contribute and we all help where we see fit. We all try to problem solve it as a staff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if any one element of the power play stood out, Carbery pointed to the Capital\u2019s entries, an area they\u2019ve struggled with throughout his tenure in DC.<\/p>\n

\u201cEntries, for me, are and have been an issue for a long time with our group,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd there\u2019s partly a reason for that, hands, and there\u2019s stuff that goes into it. But yeah, we\u2019ve got to do a better job entering the zone. Because if you can enter and gain possession \u2014 that\u2019s not always, when I say enter, you may think, carry the puck across the blue line, turn up, McDavid, wow. No, sometimes it\u2019s putting a puck to space and going to get it and retrieving it.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if you can constantly and consistently get set up, I don\u2019t care where you\u2019re in zone formation and what you\u2019re doing, because you\u2019re eventually going to get opportunities. And if you don\u2019t (get) that one, you\u2019re still going to get set up, set up, set up, set up. And I think that gives power plays a tremendous amount of confidence. When you know that you can get set up nine times out of ten, it\u2019s a huge help. I just feel like that\u2019s, over the last three years, it\u2019s been an issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

A high-end skilled winger, the sort of player general manager Chris Patrick has expressed interest in acquiring<\/a>, could certainly bolster the power play, but the trade market has been relatively quiet, and the Capitals\u2019 middling playoff chances make it harder (though not impossible) to justify buying before Friday\u2019s trade deadline.<\/p>\n

As of Monday afternoon, the Capitals sit two points behind the Boston Bruins for the second wild card spot in the East, with three more games played. They\u2019ll need every advantage they can manage to push up into the playoff picture in their final 20 games of the season, and the power play may be one of the biggest barriers to that goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARLINGTON, VA \u2014 The Washington Capitals are no strangers to power play problems. Since the departures of Nicklas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-501745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}