Caps Briefing: Bring it Back
They may measure two inches shy of a collective 19 feet tall, but the first three Caps picks from this weekend's NHL draft stand on the shoulders of giants. With two picks in the first round and their first of two in the second, the Caps brought in players with strong connections to franchise history, tying the team's future to its past.
The Caps traded up to the 21st overall spot to pick Anton Gustafsson, the son of the team's legendary playmaker Bengt Gustafsson. On Frozen Blog offers some great insights on why the Caps traded up to make the pick. We'd expect them to come up with some good analysis, since one of their four contributors posts under the handle Gustafsson. Bengt scored 555 points for the Caps, including five goals in one game against the team's newly rekindled rival, the Philadelphia Flyers.
Shortly after picking up the younger Gustafsson, the Caps traded Steve Eminger and a later pick to those very same Flyers for another first round pick. Then they selected defenseman John Carlson. Carlson currently plays for the London Knights. Knights owner and head coach Dale Hunter holds the Caps records for single-season penalty minutes, career penalty minutes and playoff points, as well as the NHL all time record for playoff penalty minutes.
The trade cleared up one of the major questions heading into next season. Eminger is a good young offensively gifted defenseman. The trouble is that he is not quite as good or quite as young as Caps star Mike Green or prospect Sami Lepisto--let alone 2007 fifth overall pick Karl Alzner. It's a hockey truism that for every young defenseman you want to develop, your team needs a stalwart veteran defenseman to show him the ropes and cover his mistakes. The Capitals' current list of highly experienced defensemen is as follows: (1) Tom Poti.
This didn't leave a lot of room for Eminger, who will doubtlessly develop into a better player with the Flyers than he could have here. Trading him away for a first round pick is a respectable solution. Using that pick on a player who is learning the game from one of the most competitive athletes ever to play any sport in Washington places this deal decidedly in the win column.
The Caps' first of two second round selections is defenseman Eric Mestery. The pick made headlines in Hershey because Mestery's coach with the Tri-City Americans is former Hershy Bear Don Nachbaur. Since the Bears are the Caps' farm team, this gives the player something of a distant relationship with the Caps already. Of course, The Patriot News article (above) also points out that Mestery's current team is owned by Olaf Kolzig.
Over the last decade and a half, Kolzig made a name for himself as the best goalie in Caps history. This season he was replaced by Cristobal Huet, and said he does not expect to return. Of course, the latest word on Huet's contract for next season was that his agent would meet with the team at the draft. Unless the Caps are saving up a big announcement, Huet could become an unrestricted free agent on July 1.