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Brian MacLellan is 64. He played his first NHL game 40 years ago. He has spent nearly a quarter of a century as a scout and manager with the Washington Capitals. The 2023/24 season will be his tenth as general manager. As a player, he won a Stanley Cup. He won another as a roster creator. The path to another will not be easy.
“I like the job,” he said on the phone. “I like the challenge. Former players always say that coaching is the closest thing to competition. Even where we are in hockey, it’s very competitive. It’s fun. The juices flow. So you get the things you got as a player.
“I played because I enjoyed it. you participated It was passionate. Now, at this age, you do it on a different level.”
Because of his past at the club and his accomplishments as a leader, the Capitals are not only renewing MacLellan’s contract – which was due to expire after this season – but also promoting him to president of hockey operations and general manager. The move, announced Monday, is for an undisclosed number of years and will allow longtime team president Dick Patrick, 76, to step into a less active role as chairman of the franchise. Perhaps more importantly, the club will also promote Patrick’s son Chris, 47, to assistant general manager, potentially creating a succession plan when MacLellan finally retires.
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The moves bring stability to the Capitals’ front office at a time when the team is going through a transition on the ice. When MacLellan took over as general manager from George McPhee – his old college teammate at Bowling Green – he had a clear path to improving the club’s lineup and culture. Now that the core of these early clubs – Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, John Carlson, TJ Oshie – are on the wrong side of 30, the task in MacLellan’s final act will be harder than it was before to make the tweaks that eventually the turn brought internationals to the Stanley Cup champions.
“It’s a little harder,” MacLellan said. “I still think we’re competitive. Health was a big issue for us. We have an aging squad that has been struggling to stay healthy lately. Some of these are chronic and age-related. Some of them are just weird injuries. I don’t think we’re at the level we were at. I think there is still a chance to fight. I think we’re getting closer to the young people we have now.”
Since MacLellan’s first season as general manager, the Capitals have had a .640 win ratio, and only Tampa Bay and Boston have surpassed Washington’s 409 wins. But the Capitals have suffered their first postseason failure of MacLellan’s tenure. The squad’s status – particularly Backstrom, who was thwarted by a chronic hip problem – led to coach Peter Laviolette departing and MacLellan using Spencer Carbery as his fourth coach.
Carbery previously coached the junior caps, but this is his first time as an NHL head coach. The success of MacLellan’s final verse will, to some extent, be left to the 41-year-old.
“It’s been going really well so far,” MacLellan said. “I like the character. I like the excitement. He’s at a good age where he can give everything. He’s confident. He feels he is ready. You can tell from him that he feels ready. I’m excited to see what he does.”
Carbery gets that chance in part because the Capitals haven’t won a playoff series since winning the 2018 Cup under Barry Gottes. Not only are the key players in the squad older – Ovechkin turns 38 next month – but most have also signed deals that could weigh on the team in the future. Backstrom, 35, and Oshie, 36, are signed until 2024-25. Carlson, 33, is under contract until 2025-26, as is Ovechkin, who is feverishly aspiring to Wayne Gretzky’s NHL scoring record.
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Solving the problem of remaining loyal to the players who transformed the sport in Washington while still competing will be MacLellan’s greatest challenge in the years to come. He believes that 2022 first-round draft pick Ivan Miroshnichenko will soon help and there should be more time for prospects like Hendrix Lapierre and Connor McMichael.
“I think we’re getting closer to the young people that we have now,” MacLellan said. “I thought we had a good design here. … I think there is a good base to build on. Plus that [salary] The upper limit will increase in the coming years. That should create some opportunities that haven’t existed before. The last five years with a flat cap have been frustrating. You are trying to survive rather than improve.”
At some point, improving the roster will no longer be MacLellan’s job. It sounds very much like it could fall to the younger Patrick, who played at Princeton and worked on Wall Street before McPhee hired him in 2008. MacLellan has been impressed with how Patrick has progressed in his role as head of pro scouting and as the club’s top minor on the Hershey league team that won the American Hockey League championship that spring.
“He got it right,” MacLellan said. “He came in and worked his way up. He tried different things and found a niche, and he did a really good job at Hershey. He did everything right and now he’s dealing with agents and making some deals. He took the right steps to become a good general manager.”
The Capitals’ roster and their fortunes on the ice are changing. Your front office is stable. It’s up to the latter to take care of the former so the franchise can once again compete for the greatest hockey prize every year.