Capitals fire coach after playoff failures
Back-to-back early playoff exits were enough to make the Washington Capitals realize they made a mistake.
In the two years since promoting top assistant Todd Reirden instead of giving Stanley Cup-winning coach Barry Trotz a raise, they’ve been knocked out of the playoffs in the first round. On Sunday, the team fired Reirden days after losing a five-game series to Trotz’s New York Islanders and moved toward hiring the seventh coach since Alex Ovechkin entered the NHL.
“We have higher expectations for our team, and we felt a fresh approach in leadership was necessary,” general manager Brian MacLellan said. “Todd has been a big part of our team for more than half a decade, including our Stanley Cup run in 2018, and we wish him and his family all the best moving forward.”
Dismissing Reirden is an acknowledgment that the longtime assistant wasn’t able to make the most out of a team built to continue contending for championships with Ovechkin, centers Nicklas Backstrom and Evgeny Kuznetsov, wingers Tom Wilson and T.J. Oshie and defensemen John Carlson and Dmitry Orlov in the prime of their careers.
After Trotz coached the Capitals to their first title in franchise history in 2018, an automatic extension kicked in to keep him under contract at his current salary. NHL coaching salaries had ballooned between the times Trotz signed his contract and lifted the Cup, and the organization decided to let him go rather than pay him more.
Trotz’s Islanders have reached the second round twice in two chances since veteran general manager Lou Lamoriello hired him almost immediately after the Capitals let him resign.
Washington’s move was made in part because members of the front office saw Reirden as head coaching material after several years as an assistant there and in Pittsburgh.
The Reirden-coached Capitals made the playoffs in his two seasons in charge, bowed out to the Carolina Hurricanes last year and were outclassed by the Islanders this summer. It’s the first time they failed to win a playoff series in consecutive years since 2013 and 2014, which led to a full regime change.