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.