Patrick McDermott/Getty Images
Statistically, ages 25-29 tend to be an age when hockey players are approaching or have already reached their professional peak. Ideally, a team would like much of their core to be in that age bracket.
For the current season, this would be the players drafted during the NHL Entry Drafts from 2014 through 2017. For the Washington Capitals, only one of the players is on their current roster.
Instead, their core consists mainly of older players, such as Alex Ovechkin, T.J. Oshie, and John Carlson. Tom Wilson was drafted in 2012, just outside of the time frame being considered in the article. Dylan Strome was a free-agent signing who his previous team chose not to re-sign.
Thus, it’s time to examine the draft choices the Capitals made from 2013 through 2017. Among those drafts, the 2013 draft was the last one conducted during George McPhee’s term as General Manager while the remainder were conducted while Brian McLellan was in charge.
2013 Draft
- Andre Burakovsky (Forward — Round 1 – Pick #23) – Burakovsky was a relatively good choice in that draft which was a rather shallow draft. He played nearly five years with the Capitals and was part of their Stanley Cup-winning team of 2017-18 but often had trouble with consistency in performance so was subject to healthy scratches. He was traded to the Colorado Avalanche on June 28, 2019 for two draft picks. He currently plays with the Seattle Kraken and has been bothered with injuries throughout his career.
- Madison Bowey (Defenseman — Round 2 – Pick #53) — Bowey was part of the Stanley Cup-winning team of 2017-18 but could never earn a regular role with the Capitals and was traded to the Detroit Red Wings in the Nick Jensen deal on February 22, 2019. He was unable to earn a full-time NHL role, last played in the NHL in 2021-22, and signed with the KHL for the 2023-24 season.
- Zach Sanford (Forward — Round 2 – Pick #61) – Sanford played 26 games with the Capitals during the 2016-17 season. The Capitals included him in the trade to acquire Kevin Shattenkirk on February 27, 2017. He played nearly three full seasons with the Blues and was part of their Stanley Cup-winning team of 2018-19, then played with several other teams. He currently plays with the Arizona Coyotes but has not played in the NHL full-time since 2021-22.
- Remaining players — Brian Pinho (Center – Round 6 – Pick #174) and Tyler Lewington (Defense – Round 7 – Pick #204) played in a handful of NHL games. Blake Heinrich (Defense – Round 5 – Pick #144) never played in the NHL.
2014 Draft
Photo: NHL via Getty Images
- Jakub Vrana (Forward – Round 1 — Pick #13) – Vrana played three full seasons and parts of two other seasons with the Capitals and was a member of their Stanley Cup winning team of 2017-18. He struggled with consistency and was traded to the Detroit Red Wings on April 12, 2021 for Anthony Mantha who remains with the Capitals. He could never find consistency since leaving the Capitals and the St. Louis Blues waived him during December. He has likely played his last game in the NHL as his contract expires after this season.
- Vitek Vanecek (Goaltender – Round 2 – Pick #39) – Vanecek played with the Capitals from 2020-21 through 2022-23 as part of a tandem with Ilya Samsonov. The Capitals traded him to the New Jersey Devils on July 8, 2022 for two draft picks. He is currently part of a goalie tandem in New Jersey.
- Nathan Walker (Forward – Round 3 – Pick #89) – Walker played in a total of 10 games with the Capitals during the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons. He signed with the St. Louis Blues as a free agent after the 2018-19 season. He has divided time with the Blues and their AHL affiliates. He has spent the entire 2023-24 with their AHL affiliate, the Springfield Thunderbirds.
- Remaining players – Shane Gersich (Forward – Round 5 – Pick #134) played three games with the Capitals and, after five seasons with the Hershey Bears, currently played in the Swedish League. Steven Spinner (Forward – Round 6 – Pick #159) and Kevin Elgestal (Round 7 – Pick #194) never played in the NHL.
2015 Draft
- Ilya Samsonov (Goaltender – Round 1 – Pick #22) – Samsonov played with the Capitals from 2019-20 through 2021-22. He was backup to Braden Holtby during his first year with the team and served as part of a tandem during his two remaining seasons. As neither he nor Vitek Vanecek could seize the #1 goaltending job, the Capitals decided to move on from them both, trading Vanecek and not giving Samsonov a qualifying offer. Thus, he left the team as a free agent after 2021-22 and signed a contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs where he remains.
- Joonas Siegenthaler (Defense – Round 2 – Pick #57) – He played with the Capitals from 2018-19 through 2020-21. As he was often a healthy scratch during the 2020-21, he asked for a trade and was traded to the New Jersey Devils on April 11, 2021. He remains with the New Jersey Devils.
- Remaining players – the two remaining draft picks, Connor Hobbs (Defenseman – Round 5 – Pick #143) and Colby Williams (Defenseman – Round 6 – Pick #173) never played in the NHL.
2016 Draft
- Lucas Johansen (Defenseman – Round 1 – Pick #28) – Johansen played in parts of the 2021-22, 2022, 23, and 2023-24 seasons with the Capitals. His development was set back by numerous injuries so he did not make the NHL until 2020-21. He had made the Capitals opening night roster for the 2023-24 season but was recently waived and returned to Hershey.
- Beck Malenstyn (Forward – Round 5 – Pick #145) – Malenstyn played in parts of the 2019-20, 2021-22, and 2022-23 seasons with the Capitals but did not become a full-time member of the Capitals until 2023-24. He is a member of the team’s fourth line.
- Axel Jonsson-Fjallby (Forward – Round 5 – Pick #147) — Jonsson-Fjallby played with the Capitals for a portion of the 2021-22 season. The Capitals waived him before the 2022-23 season and the Winnipeg Jets claimed him. He has been in Winnipeg’s organization since then, dividing time between the Jets and their AHL affiliate Manitoba Moose.
- Remaining players – Garrett Pilon (Center – Round 3 – Pick #87) and Chase Priskie (Defense – Round 6 – Pick #2016) both played a handful of NHL games. Priskie has returned to the Capitals organization where he plays with the Hershey Bears. Damien Riat (Forward — Round 4 — Pick #117) and Dmitry Zaitsev (Defensemen – Round 7 – Pick #207) never made the NHL.
Photo: Mark Humphrey/AP
2017 Draft
The Capitals did not have a pick in that draft until the fourth round. None of the players drafted in that draft made it to the NHL. The players chosen were Tobias Geisser (Round 4), Sebastian Walfridsson (Round 5), Benton Maase (Round 6), and Kristian Marthinsen (Round 7).
Afterwards
The best players that the Capitals drafted during 2013-17 had disappointed, relative to expectations and were traded to acquire other assets. It appears that the Capitals have had better fortune drafting during later drafts as the 2018 draft includes one regular defenseman and one other defenseman on the roster, the 2019 draft includes two current regulars, and the 2020 draft includes one likely regular for next season.
By Diane Doyle
Burakovsky and Vrana contributing to winning the Stanley Cup so I can’t be disappointed overall. Burakovsky especially is excellent value at 23 overall. Vrana has totally imploded. Weird.
No superstars in this batch but a lot of solid NHL talent. BMac made a few mistakes with trading Stephenson and Seigs and adding the #1 in the Mantha deal. But he’s made a lot of good moves, too.
Those were huge blunders in my book. Stephenson for a 5th is just a complete miss. Siegs a close second.
Granted, Stephenson was drafted in 2012, outside the time frame considered here, but trading him was definitely a blunder. As was the trade of Siegenthaler.
To add insult to injury, the 5th round pick obtained for Stephenson was used for a rental of Michael Raffl, and 3 points in 14 games. You could make an argument that it was a WORSE trade than Forsberg for Erat.
And some loudmouths here keep whining about the Capitals playing “AHL” players. Sure, lets trade all the future Stephensons for washed up vets. That’s the way to build an NHL team! (eyeroll)
There’s no world in which you can argue that. The Forsberg trade was the worst trade in modern NHL history, as I said at the time. We traded EXACTLY what we needed – a top-6 talent on an ELC – for EXACTLY what we didn’t need: an expensive, aging 3rd line winger. NSH should’ve had to draft a 2nd rounder, at least, to get rid of Erat’s contract. I wish we could fire GMGM again for that trade.
Forsberg is Nashville’s all-time leading goal scorer, by the way.
Burakovsky was a great pick from a draft that was relatively shallow once you got past the first few players. Too bad, he also had trouble staying healthy and is on IR with Seattle at the moment.
Burakovsky has been mostly awesome ever since leaving the Caps, even if plagued by injuries at times
Burakovsky and Vrana were at least both regulars for a while but neither became core players on the Caps and were traded away.
Vrana has attitude issues that have bedeviled him at every stop. Bura didn’t.
Can you tell about the draft picks we acquired via trades? Maybe there is a nugget of talent in one of those.
Vanecek netted us a 2nd swap and 3rd from NJ; our 2nd became D Ryan Chesley (maybe another in a line of recent top-4 D we found in the 2nd – Orlov, Siegenthaler, Fehervary… Bowey is you count him netting us Jensen? A bit disingenuous, but w/e) while NJ drafted D Seamus Casey; the 3rd became W Alex Suzdalev, a fantastic pick given what he’s been thus far. (Too early to see what he’ll become, he’s not even an NHLer yet, but in a redraft he probably goes in the 1st.)
Bear netted us a 2nd and 3rd from COL: the 2nd was used with a different 3rd to get us D Brenden Dillon, the 3rd helped us move up to get C Hendrix Lapierre.
This is a weird one if you follow the trading tree: Bear got us a 2nd and 3rd; a 2nd and 3rd got us Dillon; we moved Dillon for 2 2nds; 1 2nd was used to re-acquire Vanny from Seattle, then Vanny and the other 2nd was used to move up in the 2nd to get Chesley while also getting a 3rd which we used on Suzdalev.
SO… the Vanny trade I mentioned up top seems *awesome*; we turned Vanny into Suzdalev and even better moved up to get Chesley. But if you work backwards… you can argue that Bear got us Lapierre, Chesley, and Suzdalev, but really Suzdalev is the only guy we *added*; Lappy and Suzdalev were acquired by moving up. (You can much more accurately argue we traded Bear, C Connor Zary, and D Seamus Casey for C Lapierre, D Chesley, and W Alex Suzdalev, although who knows if Zary and Casey were the guys we would’ve picked.)
This early, those returns look *fantastic*. We’ll see how it plays out.
As important are the disappointments of who we drafted even more of a measure would be the missed opportunity of players who went after our selection.
Agree, there are several first round whiffs. Luckily it appears those are in the rear view now, as far as recent first round picks.
We have constistely picking at the bottom of rounds (trades aside) due to our success so it will always be difficult to land elite players until we do a complete rebuild when Ovi retires.
I was referencing first round complete whiffs – LuJo and AA, etc.
I feel like AA never really had a fair chance. Caps did find the “better” defenseman just one round later. But the missed opportunities that really hurt were LuJo’s draft year where we missed out on DeBrincat or Tage Thompson, choosing Samsonov instead of Brock Boeser, and missing out on Pastrnak. We chose the wrong Czech although Jake wasn’t really a “bad” pick, just not the most optimal.
I mention elsewhere that I wanted Sam Steel, Alex DeBrincat, or Boris Katchouk. DeBrincat was obviously the pick.
You threw in Thompson? I’ll throw him right back out; he was drafted by StL but he just wasn’t good. Somehow he turned himself into a superstar in BUF, but if we draft him, he likely is gone; if he becomes a superstar, it’s elsewhere.
Reference Vrana versus Larkin, Sammy versus Boeser, LuJo versus Debrincat makes the whiffs even worse
Roger that.
With either Larkin or Pastrnak, along with Boeser, and DeBrincat, we’d have decent offense instead of the non-existent offense we have now. But could we afford Pasta, Boeser, and DeBrincat?
Go Sweden even w/o Suds. Beat Canada!
Related:
https://novacapsfans.com/2023/04/04/revisiting-the-washington-capitals-whl-pipeline/
A lot of NHL disappointments but the Bears and Rays got good mileage from some of them.
True that. At least LuJo and some of the other guys like Pilon and Priskie have the Calder Cup to lean on.
Boy that 2017 class was brutal. And aside from trading our 2nd that year and in 2018 for Lars Eller, those trades didn’t really work out. Mike Weber and Kevin Shattenkirk were gone after 2017 and Phoenix Copley was mostly an AHLer. To say nothing off how our actual picks turned out. The Eller trade really carried that year, and to be fair, it was a stellar trade.
Concur. Weber was a bust and a healthy scratch in postseason that year.
All acquiring Weber did was force Nate Schmidt to play less games. And then there was Gleason, too.
Everybody lamented losing Trotz after winning the Cup, and while Reirden was obviously NOT the guy, I’ll never forget having the best team in the NHL by a clear margin TWO YEARS IN A ROW (not “the best team over those two years”, no, I mean “the best team EACH YEAR”) and we didn’t get past the 2nd round either time with Trotz, in part because of his bad decisions. Weber over Schmidt lost us a round.
Thanks for the Cup, but you need to be better than that. (In retrospect… maybe Carbery wasn’t ready, but if we could’ve just gone to Carbery then instead of wasting time with Reirden, then Lav screwing us by getting Siegenthaler to demand a trade, among many other ways Lav screwed us: how he handled Mantha and CMM… I’ll never forget that he had Mantha on the 4th line but NAK got a shot at the 1st line, Mojo kept getting top-6 mins… nothing more egregious than Craig Smith playing EVERY GAME after we acquired him, in a lost season, when he had no future with us. Those mins should’ve gone to Mantha, or CMM, or Protas, or Snively… I HATE Peter Laviolette.)
As far as I was seeing, Stephenson was doing next to nothing when they traded him, so I would chalk that one up as a who knew?
That’s what coaches and management are paid for. To know.
The catch is for Stephenson is that he wouldn’t be able to win any of the top 3 center jobs since they had Backstrom, Kuzy, and Eller as their 3 centers. And the Top 6 overall was filled, too.
There was no room for Stephenson. He hit the lottery finding a spot. Made the most of it. Good for him.
That was my point. There was no good role available for Stephenson. I feel less bad about the departure of Stephenson than some of the other moves.
I knew.
Sure he’s a center, but he played LW with Backstrom and Oshie on the 2nd line in 2018. That worked out well.
Functionally, we traded him and gave that spot to Panik; overpaying and for too long, which forced us to throw a 2nd rounder into the Mantha trade. AT THE TIME I said we should’ve kept Stephenson and given him the chance for that 3RW spot rather than overpaying Panik, who in my eyes was “just a guy” as a 3rd liner.
(We do that too often; with our cap space – so much tied up in our top guys: Ovie, Backstrom, Kuz, Wilson, Oshie, Carlson – we really needed to do a better job of giving the guys like Stephenson, Walker, Mal, AJF, Leason, etc, rather than overspending on guys like Hagelin and Panik just because they have NHL experience. I understand the desire to look for a higher floor vs a higher ceiling, but when you have to pay that much more? We should’ve been doing a better job of giving our fringe guys a chance to win spots rather than blocking them with expensive, low ceiling, mediocre players.)
ultimately the contributions to the caps are near nil. Hate that. But we were winning presidents trophies and trying to win cups. Won one. Now facing a different management of assets. Swinging for upside. Paying off.
That’s usually the case. The perennial contenders usually get less out of the drafts during their contending period and often have traded draft picks/prospects to acquire players who can help now.
Pens farm system looks much worse than ours.
Honestly, I look at that and see a relatively solid job. It’s clearly worse than the Caps did in the stretch before and after, but there’s some nice returns. Bear was a nice complementary scorer and big for the Cup win; Vrana ditto. Neither was with the team long; Bear went on to continue to be a productive complementary scorer for the Avs (another Cup) and now Kraken, while Vrana is dealing with personal shit. But even though neither had a long Caps career, they provided complementary scoring that led to a Cup win, something “better” players – Ribeiro, Grabovski, Laich, Fehr, Semin, Fleischmann, Brouwer – couldn’t/didn’t.
Bowey netted us Jensen, so that’s a win even though he didn’t come close to being the NHLer we all reasonably hoped he’d be had we evaluated him in the year or two after being drafted.
Sanford netted us Shattenkirk, who REALLY didn’t work out for us, but evaluating the *process* rather than *result* of the trade, I like that move.
Then we added a ton of fringe/bottom-6 NHLers that we never really gave a chance: Walker, AJF, Mal (finally given a chance this season – Carbery not Lav, what a shocker).
Siegenthaler may’ve ended up easily the best piece here – more consistent than Bear or Vrana – except Bear/Vrana helped us win our Cup, while Siegenthaler couldn’t earn playing time (fuck Lav forever for that and so many other things) and forced a trade, netting us a measly 3rd in return. He SHOULD’VE continued the recent tradition of 2nd round defenders netting us a top-4 defender (Orlov, an absolute stud, but also Siegenthaler, Fehervary, and even Bowey via trade for Jensen if you want to count that). (Again: fuck Lav forever.)
And since we didn’t pick in the top THREE rounds in 2017, of course we didn’t end up with anybody worth talking about.
This stretch looks pretty good IMO when contextualized… if only we’d kept Siegs.
I thought Vanacek was a solid enough backup, although I didn’t realize he was such a high pick; 39 is a high 2nd… but a solid NHLer in the 2nd round, even the high 2nd, is doing pretty well. And he netted us a 2nd swap and a 3rd; moving up in the 2nd netted us D Ryan Chesley, whom I’m very bullish on, and the 3rd became Suzdalev, who is far from a finished product but this early in the process… you couldn’t ask for a better 3rd round pick. (Not reasonably, not without cherry-picking, like Brayden Point was a 3rd, etc.)
The biggest problems was whiffing on a few 1st rounders… Samsonov and Johansen in this sample, plus shortly thereafter Alex 2x. The lesson here should be: draft Fs in the 1st round. They develop faster and have a much higher chance of hitting (partially because you use 12 Fs and only 6 D, only 2 goalies).
I wanted Konecny; we grabbed Samsonov. We won a good deal of games with him, having him as our #1 was really helpful given how cheap he was – how cheap we NEEDED our starter to be given our cap situation – but we couldn’t even trade him, we had to let him walk and get nothing in return. And, despite a promising-ish 1st season in TOR, you can see why we couldn’t get anything for him.
And LuJo? I wanted Sam Steel, Alex DeBrincat, or Boris Katchouk. DeBrincat was obviously the pick here. So… that’s a BIG, BIG whiff.
(AA wasn’t in the sample… I don’t like defenders in the 1st round, so I didn’t like it… but I didn’t see a guy I really liked instead. I really wanted Joe Veleno, but DET snatched him up one pick earlier. And in retrospect… the first really nice player after AA is probably Fehervary, so we did okay enough.)
In conclusion: we came away from these 5 drafts – really 4 – with
complementary scorers (Bear, Vrana)
one stud defender (Siegenthaler)
two useful enough goalies (Samsonov, Vanacek)
nobody really stuck – Siegs not sticking is really the toughest pill to swallow here – but we pivoted nicely when guys didn’t work here outside of that: Bowey -> Jensen being the obvious example, but Vanacek -> Chesley and Suzdalev really helps since Samsonov netted us nothing, and Sanford -> Shattenkirk really didn’t work but was a worthwhile swing, at least.
Plus a bunch of solid-to-fringe NHLers in Malenstyn, Sanford, AJF, and Walker. Consistently getting guys like that outside the top 2 rounds is *impressive* (5th, 3rd, 5th, 3rd, respectively) and gives you nice roster flexibility. Even though 2 ended up not really making a mark (AJF and Walker), consistently getting guys who are NHLers pays off, as the other 2 became: a cheap regular on a pretty good 4th line (even though it took a while to get there – fuck Lav forever), and the other helped us swing a trade for a big piece (even though, as I said, it didn’t work out).
You can of course lament the sub-optimal decisions of Samsonov and LuJo – decisions I didn’t like at the time, for the record – but overall, that’s a solid draft stretch, especially given we didn’t have a pick in the top 3 rounds in 2017. AND it’s worse than the stretch immediately before OR after. If the worst 5 year stretch in a 15 year span nets you that many solid players? I think you’re doing pretty damn good.
(The best players didn’t stick – Bear, Vrana, Siegs – PLUS the Sammy/Konecny and LuJo/DeBrincat whiffs… but Bear and Vrana playing big roles in the Cup win AND Jensen ditto – Bowey netting us Jensen – really lessens the impact there, I think. With one Cup win in our history, it’s hard to be too harsh on this stretch given how impactful it was in the 2018 Cup win.)
That was the main problem with the 2013-2017 drafts is that nobody stuck, even though some of the players were useful for a bit.
2013 — Burakovsky — good pick in a draft that wasn’t that deep but eventually traded
2014 — Vrana — an okay pick who was a regular but could have chosen better. We missed out on Pastrnak who was picked later in the round. (I feel toward him as I did about my first born back in her HS days which were a real struggle)
2015 — Samsonov — we missed out on Brock Boeser (although you identified Konecny as another “better” choice)
2016 — Johansen — we missed out on DeBrincat picked early in next round (and Caps fans who had studied prospects had noticed that)
I’ll admit I didn’t consider 2018 in my sample but even with Alexeyev being a relative bust, we did get one of the best D in the draft after him; i.e. Fehervary
Both Johansen and Alexeyev were hampered in their development by injuries. But agree, in the early rounds, it seems a better bet to focus on forwards rather than on D-men and goaltenders as it’s easier to guess how they’ll turn out. (Cautionary tale on picking D-men were the Caps first round choices of the 2005 draft which make me cringe to this day. Sasha Pokuluk who couldn’t even be a regular in Hershey (and had concussions, too) and Joe Finley who had blood clot issues. Note: both were defensemen. But only problem is … someone has to play defense and goalie or we’d be like Edmonton.
Yeah, but if we got ONLY forwards and were missing defenders, I’d rather have entered last offseason with Ovechkin, Strome, Wilson, Mantha, McMichael, Protas, Milano, Kuznetsov, Oshie, Mal, Dowd, NAK, Phillips, Lapierre, Forsberg, DeBrincat, Konecny, Snively, Frank, Miro, Sgarbossa, and Dube at F, with only Carlson, Sandin, Fehervary, Jensen, and TVR on defense, needing defenders… I’d much rather be in a position where we have to trade some of those Fs for defenders than be in a position where we draft and whiff on defenders.
And again, look at our returns on 2nd round defenders: Orlov, Siegenthaler, Fehervary… early returns on Vincent Iorio are positive, Ryan Chesley are very positive.
That’s what I mean. Somebody has to play defense and goaltending. But I remember years ago when someone had wondered if Pittsburgh could have done better with their early draft picks from 2003 through 2006. (Yes, really.) They had no beefs with picking Malkin and Crosby. But wondered if they could have done better by choosing a forward instead of Fleury in 2003. And in 2006, wonder if they would have done better by choosing Toews instead of Jordan Staal. I figure somebody had to play goal for Pitt. As for 2006, if the Pens had chosen Toews, he would have been no better than 3C and would have not been in their Top 6 except when someone was injured (which happened plenty). But Toews’ career would have played out more like Jordan Staal’s did.