At the start of the 2024-25 NHL season, the Toronto Maple Leafs already appeared poised to factor into the Jack Adams Award race – one way or another. Not only did they have their own incoming head coach in Craig Berube, but former bench boss Sheldon Keefe ultimately found himself at the helm of the rising New Jersey Devils. In both cases, a new head coach leading a team with legitimate playoff aspirations made for a tantalizing recipe for the award.
What we didn’t know at the dawn of the season was that Berube and Keefe weren’t the only Maple Leafs-connected coaches who would find themselves in the Jack Adams mix. As things currently stand, the front-runner is neither Berube nor Keefe, but rather former Keefe assistant and current Washington Capitals head coach Spencer Carbery. He leads a deep field for the Jack Adams that includes the two aforementioned coaches, plus Los Angeles Kings boss Jim Hiller, once part of the Mike Babcock coaching staff.
With all four men (as well as several others) holding at least some argument for their candidacy for the end-of-season award, let’s look at how we’ve reached this point with each coach and their chances of taking home the hardware.
Craig Berube
Berube walked into a fairly cushy job when he agreed to become the 40th head coach in the history of the Maple Leafs. Not that there wouldn’t be immense pressure, but he wound up in charge of one of the most talented rosters in the league who have topped 100 points in three consecutive seasons and have reached the playoffs in each of the past eight.
With the postseason all but a given, Berube’s success in Toronto is going to boil down to how the team performs once the regular season wraps up. Before then, however, the Jack Adams race must be decided. Fortunately, the gruff, no-nonsense veteran coach is making a favourable impression thus far with the Maple Leafs, helping mold a tougher, physical and more defensive-minded squad that, at the moment, looks better-suited for postseason success than other recent iterations of the franchise.
With Berube in charge, the Maple Leafs have improved from 21st in goals allowed per game league-wide to 13th. Sure, the additions of Chris Tanev and Oliver Ekman-Larsson on the blue line, as well as Anthony Stolarz in net, play a big part in that defensive improvement, but better goal prevention suggests strongly that Berube’s message is getting through. It also helps explain why Toronto is on track to earn their first division title (in a non-COVID season, anyway) since 1999-00.
Sheldon Keefe
In what was a roller coaster summer of 2024, Keefe didn’t stay down for long. After being fired by the Maple Leafs following another first round playoff exit, he found employment exactly two weeks later with the Devils. And what’s more, he instantly became a trendy Coach of the Year pick.
Even as other coaches have earned their way into the conversation, Keefe remains a Jack Adams candidate. His Devils are firmly in the Eastern Conference playoff mix, owning a seven-point cushion on the third divisional spot in the Metropolitan despite having lost nine of their last 12 games. Jesper Bratt, Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier continue to star up front for New Jersey, while offseason acquisition Jacob Markstrom has been a stabilizing presence in net.
The Devils’ current standing (60 points in 50 games) is good enough to suggest that Keefe has been successful in putting a 2023-24 disappointment behind them. However, in order to win the Jack Adams for the first time, he would need to get them winning again and spearhead a performance more in line with their 112-point campaign in 2022-23.
Spencer Carbery
The biggest surprise of the 2024-25 season to date has been the play of the resurgent Capitals, who reign comfortably atop the Eastern Conference under the guidance of Carbery. The current Jack Adams favourite is in his second season as head coach in Washington following a two-year stint as the lead assistant under Keefe in Toronto. In fact, the fast-rising Carbery supplanted Keefe as the youngest head coach in the league when he was hired (until the San Jose’s Sharks Ryan Warsofsky was promoted to head coach this past summer).
Now, in a second tour of duty in the Capitals’ organization after previously leading the American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate Hershey Bears, Carbery has Washington exceeding all preseason expectations. They rank second league-wide in goals per game (3.54) while also ranking first in goals allowed (2.38). Through just 48 games, they already sit at 71 points, just nine shy of the 80 they put up over the entirety of the 2022-23 season before Carbery arrived.
With Carbery at the helm, it’s difficult to find any clear weaknesses when it comes to the Capitals. They are deep offensively, physically imposing and defensively sound. Where it was once Alex Ovechkin and the rest, now eight Capitals have already recorded double-digit goal totals (a number that will increase to nine when Pierre-Luc Dubois scores his next goal). In net, Logan Thompson is a blistering 22-2-3 with a .925 save percentage and a 2.09 goals-against average. Seemingly out of nowhere, Washington is now the toast of the NHL, and Carbery has had plenty to do with that success.
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Jim Hiller
Currently a dark horse in the Jack Adams race, Hiller has, nonetheless, performed admirably in his first full season in charge of the Kings. He took over from Todd McLellan as the interim head coach last February, leading the Kings to a 21-12-1 record in 34 games before suffering a 4-1 first round playoff loss to the Edmonton Oilers. That effort was good enough to secure the full-time role in May.
The ascension to head coach has been a long time coming for the 55-year-old Hiller, who began coaching in 2002 immediately following his on-ice retirement after a well-traveled pro hockey career. Counted among the many stops of his coaching journey was following Babcock from Detroit to Toronto in 2015 and right through to 2019. Hiller clearly hasn’t forgotten his Maple Leafs days, as he brought on fellow former assistant and former Ottawa Senators head coach D.J. Smith to join his coaching staff.
Even with Drew Doughty (ankle) having yet to get into game action this season, Hiller has the Kings on pace for 104 points, which would represent an improvement on the 99 they collected last season. The club’s improvement may not ultimately be dramatic enough to help him keep up in a Jack Adams race that also includes the likes of Scott Arniel (Winnipeg Jets), Bruce Cassidy (Vegas Golden Knights), John Hynes (Minnesota Wild) and Ryan Huska (Calgary Flames), but it still serves to highlight the positive impact that he’s had.
While there’s no one coaching tree that has yielded this group of highly successful leaders, it’s nonetheless interesting to see so many of the top-performing coaches in the league this season hold ties to Toronto. The Maple Leafs franchise has been fortunate to reap the benefits of many elite coaching minds over the years. Perhaps this could finally be the year that one of those minds gets recognized.
