Capitals, Reirden part ways
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 Cupwinning 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.
“There was a continuity that we tried to duplicate with Todd to keep the same structure going forward,” general manager Brian MacLellan told reporters in a video interview. “I think it worked for a while, and as we evolved it started to slip and it wasn’t working. I guess in hindsight you could say we could’ve brought in a more experienced guy, but I thought that was the right decision at the right time for both the players and what we had going on in circumstances.”
Dismissing Reirden is an acknowledgement 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 time Trotz signed his contract and lifted the Cup, and the organization decided to let him go rather than pay him more on a longterm deal.
“It’s disappointing for us that we couldn’t come to an agreement, a compromise on the negotiations,“MacLellan said. “We were more than willing to pay market level. I think term was the sticking point on the negotiation.”
While Reirden got a multiyear deal, 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 walk.