Grading Spencer Carbery's first season at the helm of the Capitals

If you're a glass half full person you're looking at the positives of seeing the Washington Capitals succeed in making the playoffs under Spencer Carbery. If you're a glass half empty folk, you saw the Caps barely squeak by into the playoffs and struggle.

So how would we grade Spencer Carbery's first season with the Capitals, I'd give it a B+ and here's why.

Carbery not only helped lead the Caps back into the playoffs. He kept the room together during adversity and during the mini fire sale at the trade deadline. Keeping a room together in the face of adversity is how you even make it into the dance in the first place. That is B plus worthy.

That said, Carbery still had his rookie mistakes. Every coach does. The fact he's the youngest coach in the NHL and not in the conversation for the Jack Adams is even more preposterous. Carbery didn't just get that coaching job, he earned it.

Starting out as a player in the ECHL with the South Carolina Stingrays, Carbery turned out to coach them. Then he got promoted to the Hershey Bears head coaching positiion and completly turned the tide of the Caps farm system around. There's no Calder Cup last season and a chance at a repeat this year without the path that was paved by Carbery.

Carbery left the Capitals organization shortly after that Bears regular season success for an assistant coaching job with the Toronto Maple Leafs. We all know he helped make their power play one of the league's top notch. Sadly that didn't happen but Carbery had older players to roll out. He didn't have any Auston Matthews speed from the big stars.

But that's where the young bucks and up and coming prospects came in. Whether it was Aliaksei Protas, Connor McMichael, Hendrix Lapierre, or Ivan Miroshnichenko, it was always a next man up mentality whether someone got injured or traded.

What Carbery and the Capitals need to improve on is consistency. Making the second wild card and getting swept again won't cut it. And onions will already be getting cut as we enter Alex Ovechkin's last dance, 41 away from the record and two years left on the contract.