On Monday morning we joined Tarik and Corey and a few other media outlets out at Kettler Capitals Iceplex for a pre-draft gab session with Capitals’ General Manager George McPhee. We put a tough question to him:
“A two-part question for you. The team’s enjoyed terrific success at the draft the last four or five years, particularly relative to say your first years here. How do you account for the remarkable discprepancy in success? Also, do you conduct a lessons learned on drafts with your scouting team after say 5 years’ time — lessons learned in terms of hits and misses?”
He told us, “That’s a very good question. I agree with you that our drafting recently has been a lot better than early on.
“A lot of it has to do with experience. We hired a young staff, and it was going to take them some time to get up and get going. And that’s a lesson you learn as a manager. We had a young staff, and we’ve constantly tried to upgrade our systems and how we do things, and we do review every draft.
“We do it basically three years out. At our January meeting we go through who did we draft three years ago, and I try to take notes after every draft — what we were thinking going in; what happened in each round; what happened before each pick; what did we want to do and what did we do; who said what. And then we pull out all those notes three years later and start talking to our scouts about it in our meeting. And if you do it right it’s really helpful. You learn a lot from it.
“In the early years the scouts were sort of walking on eggshells when we were doing it. But if you do it right and people are comfortable with being accountable you get better. And we have been getting better. We’ve found different ways to process information we’ve been getting for the drafts.”
McPhee also was asked about picking much deeper in rounds beginning this June after choosing from a lottery perch the past couple of drafts. “It’s always hard picking,” he said. “If you’re picking in the top four or five, you better get the right guy — you can’t miss [on] them.”
“You don’t get to pick in the top three or four or five very often — if you are, somebody else is going to be making the picks pretty soon.”
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[...] together 10 years now. They’ve made their share of mistakes in June in years past, which the GM has aknowledged, but they’re enjoying more success these days. That continued this past weekend in Ottawa. [...]
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