Fresh Starts: 6 NHL Teams Start 2023-24 With New Head Coaches

Ahh, summertime traditions. BBQs on the beach and NHL teams switching around their head coaches.

There is no pay cap on coaches, which presents a dilemma to general managers who want to make changes to their player rosters due to the tight salary-cap scenario. Furthermore, terminating a bench boss with a term remaining on his contract only requires disbursing the outstanding cash.

Ten of the 32 NHL teams had new coaches for the 2022–2023 season, making it an incredible season.

Those actions yielded significant rewards, to 0. With the Boston Bruins, Jim Montgomery broke regular-season records and won the Jack Adams Award for coach of the year. Bruce Cassidy, the man he succeeded, won his first Stanley Cup with the Vegas Golden Knights out west.

Furthermore, in his debut season at Sunrise, Paul Maurice led the Florida Panthers to the Stanley Cup Final. The Dallas Stars let Peter DeBoer to play all the way to the Western Conference Final in his debut. And following absences from the playoffs the previous season, Lane Lambert and Rick Bowness, respectively, helped the New York Islanders and the Winnipeg Jets return to the postseason.

Six additional head coaching positions changed hands this summer as a result of the outcomes. The group this year is also a bit of a mixed bag. We still haven’t hired anyone from Europe, but we do have one immediate retread, two additional returnees, and three new hires with strong resumes.

This is a summary of the adjustments made during the 2023 offseason. The appointments are listed in order of hire date. CapFriendly provided all contract terms and salary details.

Carbery is the youngest man on this list, coming in at 41. Although he is a first-time NHL head coach, he has a solid resume that includes coach of the year honors from the ECHL’s South Carolina Stingrays in 2014 and the Capitals’ AHL club, the Hershey Bears, in 2021. Carbery’s Bears finished with a league-best 24-7-2 record in 33 games during the pandemic-shortened season.758 points per game, but were unable to put their skills to the test in the postseason, which was limited to the Pacific Division teams of the AHL.

Nevertheless, Sheldon Keefe was impressed by Carbery’s efforts and hired him to serve as an assistant for the Toronto Maple Leafs for the previous two seasons. Carbery will receive more attention as he rejoins the Capitals.

a chance to manage Alex Ovechkin’s pursuit of the NHL record for most goals scored and to try to guide the team back into the playoffs after its eight-season run was ended last year. Ovechkin, who has 822 goals going into the season, needs 72 more to tie Wayne Gretzky’s record of 894.

Despite rumors of interest from other teams, Carbery managed to sign a four-year deal with the Capitals, which is a nice bit of stability for a rookie. His salary is not made public.