The Capitals have promoted Patrick Wellar to their NHL coaching staff on an interim basis, Bailey Johnson of The Washington Post reports. It will be his first NHL role after spending the past several years working as an assistant for Washington’s AHL affiliate in Hershey.
Wellar will ensure the Capitals maintain a four-person bench staff to begin the campaign. Assistant Mitch Love, who primarily works with the team’s defensemen, was placed on leave two weeks ago pending the results of a league investigation into an off-ice incident involving his personal conduct that predated his time with the organization.
The 41-year-old Wellar will now do the same, Johnson said. While going out of one’s way to name an interim head coach during a short-term absence isn’t uncommon, uprooting an assistant from an AHL affiliate is an indication that the club doesn’t expect Love to return anytime soon.
Wellar is entering his eighth year in the organization, all of which have been spent in his everyday assistant role with Hershey. In doing so, he’s been a part of one of the best-run development ladders in the league regarding team success. The Bears won back-to-back Calder Cups in 2023 and 2024 and haven’t finished the regular season with a sub-.500 record during his tenure.
The Saskatchewan native also spent six years of his playing career in the Caps organization with AHL Hershey and ECHL South Carolina from 2008-14. He won a Calder Cup while on Hershey’s blue line in 2010, appearing in all 21 postseason games alongside future NHL fixtures John Carlson, Jay Beagle, Karl Alzner, and Mathieu Perreault.
According to Johnson, the Caps have also named a replacement for the replacement. Veteran coach Brent Thompson – the father of Sabres star Tage Thompson – will step in to cover Wellar’s responsibilities with Hershey. The 54-year-old is a former ECHL Coach of the Year and spent 10 years as the bench boss for AHL Bridgeport in the Islanders organization in two separate stints between 2011 and 2023. He spent the past two seasons as an assistant under Greg Cronin in Anaheim but was not retained by the Ducks for the 2025-26 season.