Carbery Wins Louis A.R. Pieri Memorial Award as AHL's Outstanding Coach

May 28, 2021

The American Hockey League announced today that Spencer Carbery of the Hershey Bears is the winner of the Louis A.R. Pieri Memorial Award as the AHL’s outstanding coach for the 2020-21 season. The award is voted on by fellow coaches and members of the media in each of the league’s 28 active member cities.

Carbery, 39, is the first Hershey head coach to win the award since John Paddock in 1988. He is just the fifth coach in franchise history to earn this honor, joining Paddock, Doug Gibson (1979-80), Chuck Hamilton (1975-76), and Frank Mathers (1968-69).

Under Carbery’s guidance, the Bears finished atop the AHL standings with a record of 24-7-2-0, a .758 points percentage that ranks as the second-highest mark in the franchise’s 83-year history. Hershey, who had the AHL's best home record, going an impressive 14-1-2-0 at GIANT Center, allowed a league-low 2.33 goals per game in 2020-21 and ranked eighth in scoring (3.33).  During the 2020-21 campaign, Carbery earned his 300th professional win on Apr. 7 at Binghamton, and tallied his 100th American Hockey League victory on May 2 versus Lehigh Valley. He became the 12th coach in franchise history to win 100 games with the Bears.

Carbery also sent several players to the National Hockey League to compete with the Washington Capitals this season while continuing to oversee the development of Caps prospects such as Alex Alexeyev, Garrett Pilon, Axel Jonsson-Fjallby, Brett Leason, Martin Fehervary, Kody Clark, Riley Sutter and 2020-21 AHL All-Rookie forward Connor McMichael.

Named head coach of the Bears on June 26, 2018, Carbery has led the club to a three-year record of 104-50-9-8, good for a .658 points percentage, including a 53-18-3-2 mark (111 points, .730) in their last 76 regular-season games. The Victoria, British Columbia native spent the 2017-18 season as an assistant coach with the AHL’s Providence Bruins, and served as head coach of Hershey’s ECHL affiliate, the South Carolina Stingrays, from 2011 to 2016. He is the winningest coach in South Carolina history, and earned ECHL Coach of the Year honors in 2013-14. 

The Louis A.R. Pieri Memorial Award, which was first presented in 1968, honors the late Mr. Pieri, a long-time contributor to the AHL as the owner and general manager of the Providence Reds and a member of the American Hockey League Hall of Fame. Previous winners of the award include Frank Mathers (1969), Fred Shero (1970), Al MacNeil (1972, ‘77), John Muckler (1975), Jacques Demers (1983), Larry Pleau (1987), Mike Milbury (1988), John Paddock (1988), Marc Crawford (1993), Barry Trotz (1994), Robbie Ftorek (1995, ‘96), Peter Laviolette (1999), Claude Julien and Geoff Ward (2003), Claude Noel (2004), Randy Cunneyworth (2005), Kevin Dineen (2006), Scott Gordon (2008), Scott Arniel (2009), John Hynes (2011), Jon Cooper (2012), Willie Desjardins (2013), Jeff Blashill (2014), Mike Stothers (2015), Rick Kowalsky (2016), Roy Sommer (2017), Pascal Vincent (2018), Mike Vellucci (2019) and Karl Taylor (2020).