Wrote this story over the weekend on the Capitals’ recent draft history. Also, had plenty left over after chatting with general manager George McPhee and Ross Mahoney, the organization’s director of amateur scouting.
One thing I could tell Mahoney wanted to get across – and was proud of, too – was how much his North American and European scouts are on the road during the hockey season. Mahoney pegged the number of games he saw in person in 2010-11 at 225 – an astonishing amount even with the number of times these guys catch two or three games in a day.
Made a comment in the story I didn’t have space to expand on: That no NHL team has done a better job building through the draft over the last nine years. My reasoning? Even a team like Detroit, which is the gold standard in this category, is living off its drafts from well over 10 years ago. In the case of guys like Tomas Holmstrom and Chris Osgood and Nicklas Lidstrom you’re talking 17, 19 and 21 years. Even Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg were late-round picks 12 and 13 years ago now. Washington iced 15 of its own draft picks last season – 12 of them playing at least 35 games – and every one of them was chosen in the 2002 draft or later. In my research I couldn’t find a single NHL team that had that for its 2010-11 roster.
Yes – a few of you have let me know – that hasn’t translated into playoff success yet. But to me the draft is first and foremost about acquiring as much talent as possible, becoming a competitive team and managing the salary cap. Figuring out the Stanley Cup playoffs is a step beyond the draft process. Hard enough to tell if Alex Semin is going to become a 30-to-40 goal scorer – let alone if he will turn into an offensive-hooking machine and a playoff ghost. Think if that’s your criteria for draft success you need a fortune teller, not a general manager.
Anyway, Washington’s brain trust has been in Minnesota for a few days. We all know McPhee plays his cards close to the vest. But he was pretty open about the 2011 draft class in a conversation with reporters last week. It isn’t very deep.
“I thought this was the year if you’re going to give away picks this was the year to do it,” McPhee said. “And I don’t have any regrets about that. If something happens and we pick up a pick or two that’s okay. But I’m not that concerned about not having picks in this particular draft. There are some drafts that are great drafts and you sure don’t want to give away picks in that kind of draft. But this isn’t that kind of draft.”
McPhee said the team will hew to its longtime philosophy – choose the best player available. There are prospects that the Caps are interested at No. 26. But so much depends who falls to them. Needless to say, no one in the organization expects a repeat of last year where it’s possible the best player in the draft – Russian forward Evgeny Kuznetsov – fell right into their lap. As Mahoney, told me last week when Kuznetsov was falling and falling through the first round last June: “I thought ‘Oh well, this is awesome.”
“I think it lacks the real difference makers,” McPhee said of this year’s class. “I think we were able to look at the last couple drafts and say we’re picking at 25 or 26. Is there a difference maker who is going to be there? Can we find one? And I think in those drafts there were going to be more available. I still think there are a few in this draft and we’re hoping one is sitting there when we pick. There were just in our opinion – from what I’m hearing from the scouts – there were more available in most recent drafts and we were fortunate to get three of them in [John] Carlson, [Marcus] Johansson and Kuznetsov.”
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