Top 3 reasons Brian MacLellan earned his promotion

#1 The last dance

Now MacLellan is not a saint. He did make some mistakes. One costly one was letting Barry Trotz go instead of coming to an agreement on an extension. But that could’ve also been a Ted Leonsis move. Who knows?

Regardless of who you point your finger at, this fact hasn’t changed: the Caps have not won a playoff series since then.

We don’t know how many more kicks at the can Ovechkin is going to get. But we do know that the clock is ticking, hence the last dance.

MacLellan did the right thing in hiring Spencer Carbery. While he isn’t Trotz, he’s still better than a previous coach that didn’t play the youth. And based on what we’ve heard from GMBM and Carbery himself, it looks like the team is going into the season with an “all in” mentality.

MacLellan talked about his new coaching hire to Svrluga:

"“It’s been really good so far. I like the character. I like the enthusiasm. He’s at a good age where he’s all-in. He’s confident. He feels he’s ready. You can feel it from him, that he feels ready. I’m excited to see what he does.”"

This is going to be a big season coming up. It’s operation get back to the playoffs. It’s operation get Ovechkin as close as possible to 895. No better guy to build the roster around him than GMBM.