The Lethal Mr. Brooks
The Capitals' communications team Saturday morning passed along some eye-opening data for Brooks Laich, who didn't have a two-goal game in his first 214 NHL games but has three in his last nine outings. Laich has 10 goals and 12 points in the Capitals' last 12 games, and now ranks third on the team with 19 goals. He entered this season with just 15 goals in 151 career NHL games.
The Capitals acquired Laich from the Ottawa Senators on February 18, 2004, in a somewhat controversial trade for a fella named Peter Bondra. Coverage of the deal was famous/infamous for camera shots of Bondra in tears out at Piney Orchard and Internet message boards littered with "Brooks who?" sentiments. Four years later, all of hockey is beginning to learn who Brooks Laich is.
At the time of the deal, Laich, then just 20, had played a grand total of one NHL game, and in the 2003-04 season, tallied a modest 16 goals for Binghamton and Portland in the American Hockey League. Bondra would go on to add 52 goals in a little more than two seasons in Ottawa, Atlanta, and Chicago before retiring. Laich, who won't turn 25 until this summer, will score his 20th goal of the season any shift now, and by all appearances, he has a good many more ahead of him in his NHL career. He's a magnificent skater, a grinder with soft gloves, a heart-and-soul type.
He's particularly comfortable doing the dirty work in front of the opposition's net.
"If you want money, you go to the bank. If you want bread, you go to the bakery. If you want goals, you go to the net," Laich said.
Who in hockey back in February 2004 would have identified McPhee's dealing of Bondra as lopsided . . . in favor of the Caps? That 2004 deal, incidentally, also brought from Ottawa a second-round pick, and in the summer of 2005 George McPhee flipped it to Colorado at the Entry Draft for a late first-round selection that day.
Joe Finley.
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