Brian MacLellan’s Five Best Drafts Picks As Capitals General Manager
By CJ Witt
2014
In his first draft making the final decisions the Capitals and MacLellan possibly hit a home run. With the 13th overall pick in the draft the Caps used that pick on Czech forward Jakub Vrana. Vrana has now played in three full seasons with the Capitals and is getting better every year.
In his first full year he scored 13 goals and 27 points in 73 games. The next year he scored 24 goals and 47 points in 82 games. This past year with just 69 games played he had already scored 25 goals and put up 52 points. He’s only 24 years old and is still yet to reach his ceiling. Thirty goals and potentially 70 points, in my opinion is not out of the question for this young man. Maybe even more than that, we’ll see.
Even if Vrana were to not get much better, this was still a heck of a first pick to make as a GM.
Vitek Vanecek
The jury is still out on this one, as will most of the guys on this list honestly. The Capitals are in a cap crunch, and the somewhat easy and obvious choice to ease that crunch is to move on from Braden Holtby. The organizational goaltending depth makes that decision a lot easier. Vanecek is a part of that depth.
Vanecek was picked 39th overall in this draft. His numbers in the AHL have been pretty average. He’s hovered around the 2.50 goals against average and been around the .908 save percentage area. He has a down year in 2017-18 where he had a GAA over 3 (3.04 to be exact) and his save percentage was just .888%.
This past season however he’s put in some good numbers. The last season, he had a 2.26 GAA and a .917 save percentage. Pretty good for a young goaltender.
He might not be the number one goalie in the pipeline, but it looks like it was a solid pick in the 2014 draft. He could be a great backup in the NHL, or maybe you can trade that great backup for other needs.