One team to keep an eye on at this year’s NHL Draft are the Washington Capitals. The Caps have 11 draft picks to work with and GM George McPhee has a team with a lot of question marks surrounding it heading into next season.
As CSNWashington.com’s Chuck Gormley finds out from McPhee, the Caps are highly intrigued by what’s going on in this year’s draft.
“We like the draft a lot and we like what we think we can get at 11th and 16,” McPhee said. “There seem to be more [top quality] defensemen than forwards. We have a lot of picks this year, so we’ll be making a lot of picks.”
The Caps get to take advantage of their deal that sent Semyon Varlamov to Colorado in exchange for their first-round pick. With two first-round choices to work with, Washington could help their organizational depth a bit. With needs for skilled forwards and tougher defensemen to better their depth, the Capitals could have a lot of quality players to choose from with at those picks.
McPhee will have to make them count as the Caps have seen most of their youth find their way to Washington while at least one hopeful prospect stays in Russia in Evgeni Kuznetsov, something that doesn’t bother McPhee a whole lot.