The Washington Capitals have named Brian MacLellan president of hockey operations and general manager. The 2023-24 season will be MacLellan’s 10th as GM and 23rd with the organization. The 64-year-old has a record of 409-213-77, which is the third-most wins in the NHL since May 26, 2014, when the Capitals appointed MacLellan as general manager.
His .640 points percentage is third among general managers with 500 or more games.
Since he took over as the Caps general manager back in the 2014-15 season, Washington has won five-straight Metropolitan Division Championships (2015-16 to 2019-20), which is a franchise record, two straight Presidents’ Trophies (2015-16 to 2016-17) and helped the Capitals win their first Stanley Cup in 2018.
Prior to getting into the business side of hockey, MacLellan played 10 seasons in the NHL. He won the Stanley Cup with the Calgary Flames in 1989. The Bowling Green product also played for the Los Angeles Kings, the New York Rangers, the Minnesota North Stars and the Detroit Red Wings.
“I like the job,” MacLellan said in a phone interview with the Washington Post. “I like the challenge of it. Ex-players always say coaching is the closest thing to competing still. Even being where we are, in hockey operations, it’s competitive. It’s fun. The juices flow. So you get your fix of the stuff you kind of got as a player.”
The Capitals also promoted Chris Patrick to associate general manager. Patrick is heading into his 16th season with the Capitals.
“He’s done it the right way,” MacLellan said. “He came in and worked his way up. He tried different things and found a niche, and he’s done a real good job with Hershey. He’s done all the right things, and now he’s dealt with agents, he’s done some contracts. He’s been following the right steps to become a good general manager.”
By Jacob Cheris
Great. Responsible for this mess yet get promoted. Gives you no confidence we will ever find our way out of this mess.
He won a Stanley Cup.
See, it all depends on perspective. MacLellan has done what Ted wanted over the past decade. That meant winning a Cup, sure, but more importantly, it meant making Ted richer. Winning is just a means to do the latter, as is Ovechkin chasing Gretzky’s record. Ted wants butts in seats, merch, food and beverages sold at ridiculous prices, and eyeballs on screens. MacLellan has done a pretty good job of all that (pandemic permitting), and the value of the franchise has increased as a result, so he gets a promotion.
Snark aside, MacLellan has done a pretty decent job of keeping the Caps competitive — and profitable — for most of his tenure. Has he mortgaged the future in doing so? Somewhat, but I’m not sure he had much choice given that Ted and Sasha won’t accept a rebuild. Should he have paid Trotz instead of bringing in Laviolette? Maybe, but my guess is that Ted wouldn’t allow that, and Trotz didn’t win on Long Island (or Brooklyn, or wherever) either. I understand the theory behind hiring Lavy, it just didn’t work out. Carbery is pretty much the exact opposite of Laviolette, so let’s see how that works.
He inherited the nucleus of the championship team and has sine overseen the descent to a lottery team.
This has a lot of truth. ☝️
He was the AGM helping to build the Caps before he took over as GM. I think you have to give him some credit there just like Chris Patrick gets some credit. AGM is an important role.
Agree that he is basically a puppet for Ted and Ovie. Sad when a player, even as good as Ovie, gets to ruin a team for personal glory! Honestly if they are going with a young HC they also should have gone out and gotten a younger GM.
I remember the days when to get butts in the stands they sold the game as come see the other teams superstar. Now the sell plan is come see Ovie score. How are the going to market this team in 3 years when Ovie has the record and is retired?
Teams get old and hopefully a GOOD GM trades some of the older talent for either younger talent or picks. That has not happened here as the philosophy seems the be to keep as many older players as possible and pay them top dollar and keep this team in a bind when it comes to signing younger players so that they have to be traded for nothing. Is this the Gm, Owner or partly Ovie? Way to many young players have gone to other teams just to keep an older and aging badly core of players together. Several of these players should have been traded right after the Cup was won to get max value for them. This was not done however younger players were and they are doing great elsewhere as this attempts to retain the teams “glory”, haha, by signing players like Pacioretty (on IR), a cheap Edmundson rather than making room for their young talent.
Sad to say but isn’t it time that Ted, the Gm and Ovie all admit that this team is NOT a legitimate Cup contender and stop fooling themselves as they are not fooling the fans, unless the fan is uneducated about hockey and is blind. Time that they stop signing older players just to make a push and see what the young players that they have drafted can do.
How did Ovi ruin a team for personal glory??? Can’t wait to hear this explanation!
Don’t hold you breathe waiting for a coherent explanation
Lol.
All I got to say is …chandler stephenson for a 5th round pick.
Jonas Siegenthaler to NJ (in division) for scraps.
Not to mention a number of bad contracts that are now weighing the team down.
Thanks Captain Hindsight.
As if Stevenson did anything here to prove that he was worth more. He wasn’t going to play the first center role.
He wasn’t given a real shot. A 5th round pick? C’mon.
Troy Brouwer for T.J. Oshie. Madison Bowey for Nick Jensen. Maybe we’ll be seeing that Rasmus Sandin deal in a very positive light in the not too distant future. Sometimes you hit, sometimes you miss. Let’s not forget that the architect of the current Stanley Cup champion Knights traded Filip Forsberg for Martin Erat. And he brought in Dylan Strome and Sonny Milano. They draft Mironishenko who has top of the lineup potential.
Clearly there is a lot of confidence in GMBM to get this promotion. This also signals that they want GMBM to run this org through the rebuild which i think is a good thing (both that he wants to do it and ownership trusts him).
There have been mistakes and there have been good moves on paper that became misses. There has also been a lot of good as detailed above. I don’t have time to go do all of the research but every GM in the league has misses. Many teams want to run out their GM’s. That doesn’t mean it is smart.
Seems to me that 76 year old Patrick wanted to reduce his workload and they weren’t ready to move his son up to the presidency and didn’t want to rock the boat by bringing someone new in. So to fill the void Ted had to move GMBM up. I think it was a forced move by Patrick rather than a push up by GMBM.
Throughout his career as teams owner, Ted has proven very devoted to his employees and very adverse to changing them out. He had a gap and filled it in house.
Caps like to promote from within. Players. Coaches. GM’s. All good progression moves. And yeah, Dick needed a reduced role. Also created a new role for his son. Surely he helped architect this.