Colin Campbell called the Washington Capitals on the phone – back in the day when they had no public draft lottery – to inform them they would be picking first in the 2004 NHL draft.
And immediately after that call, George McPhee, then general manager of the Capitals, called his chief scout, Ross Mahoney, and asked him what he thought.
Without missing a beat, Mahoney said “Alexander Ovechkin.”
The general manager, doing the general manager thing, said: “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely sure,” said Mahoney before he ever sat down with his staff to discuss what would come next.
“So from that day to draft day, about eight weeks in all, we did all the research we could do,” said McPhee, now the president of the Vegas Golden Knights. “A lot of work went into that pick, although it seems kind of obvious today.
“There were two exceptional Russians available, one of them was a winger, the other one (Evgeni Malkin) was a centre. Both were big strong young guys. Usually, if you’re comparing a winger and a centre, for a team almost building from scratch, you’ll always lean towards taking the centre.
“Through all our meetings, and all our discussions, we kept coming back to Ovechkin. Ross had it nailed from the beginning. The rest of us had to be convinced.”
Washington picked first in the draft with Ovechkin. Pittsburgh, with the second pick, chose Malkin, who like Ovechkin, will be in the NHL Hall of Fame one day. Chicago, which finished with the same lousy number of points Washington did (58), got Cam Barker with the third pick.
Not everything in life is ever fair.
“I don’t ever remember thinking – this guy is going to be one of the great goal scorers who ever lived, let alone the greatest,” said McPhee. “But we were hoping we had an elite player. You don’t always see it right at the beginning, but I remember having this discussion in camp. About how easy he makes goal scoring look. And it looked like he could on anybody from anywhere. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a goal scorer work as hard as he does to score goals.
“There was something different about Alex from the beginning. His intensity. His engine. His motor. It was unlike everyone else. He didn’t just score goals, he was physically intimidating. And you could see, he loved scoring goals, but he loved the physical part of the game as well.
“Instead of being hit, he hit others. He’d step into them first, before they got him. After that, a lot of people didn’t want to deal with him. You don’t always think of great scorers being big and strong and physical (although Gordie Howe was). Alex played a game that no one else has ever played.”
Sometime between now and the end of the National Hockey League season, Ovechkin will pass Wayne Gretzky for the most goals scored in NHL history. Even as it seems so obvious now, it’s a number that no one really saw coming. McPhee didn’t draft Ovechkin thinking I’ve got the next Rocket Richard or Howe or Bobby Hull or Gretzky even. Nobody thinks that way on draft day.
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Well, nobody except Rick Dudley, the much-admired super scout of so many NHL teams over the years. When the Capitals selected Ovechkin first overall in the otherwise rather weak 2004 draft, Dudley told McPhee that “he’s the best player I’ve ever scouted.”
“I felt good about Ovechkin. But when I heard that from Rick, I felt even better.”
In the first training camp in Washington and the first years that would follow, McPhee learned how different Ovechkin was. How much time he spent working on his shot and the angles with which he shoots from. “It’s always been hard for goaltenders to read his shot,” McPhee said. “Everyone knows it’s coming. Often you know where it’s coming from. The goalies know. The coaches know, the scouts now. And they can’t stop him.
“After all these years, with video and everything else we break down in hockey, they still can’t stop him. He loves to score goals. It’s his passion.”
“I still don’t know how you stop that shot.” “It’s about strength and athleticism, just to get the shot away that quickly. That quickly and that hard. He moves one step to the right, he scores. He moves one step to the left, he scores. He has his spot, everyone knows it, but you can’t take it away from him.”
McPhee now watches Ovechkin and his former team, the Capitals, as often as he can. He probably always has. But as the goal scoring record grows ever closer, it has become much watch TV across the NHL.
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“I’m so proud of this guy,” McPhee said. “Proud that he absorbed so much (punishment) over the years, he took a lot of criticism from everybody too. A lot of times in hockey we talk about protecting the superstars. But he’s the one who never needed protection. He was the toughest and strongest player on the ice.
“What still amazes me – and probably amazes everybody, it’s that a lot of the time you knew what he was going to do and you just couldn’t stop him. One thing about Alex compared to most big shooters in hockey, he rarely misses the net. He makes sure he hits the net. He doesn’t shoot wide or high. That’s something he has worked really hard at.”
Gretzky scored 637 goals in the first half of his career, 257 in the second half. The initial pace was impossible to keep up. The inexplicable Ovechkin has 475 goals in the first half of his career, 411 in the second half. And now nine goals to go.
“I hope to be there when he does it,” McPhee said.
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