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Aug 05, 2023

Caps Name MacLellan President

Continuity and stability have been hallmarks of the most successful stretches of the Capitals' franchise history. In making 32 postseason appearances in the last 40 seasons, the Caps have employed

Continuity and stability have been hallmarks of the most successful stretches of the Capitals' franchise history. In making 32 postseason appearances in the last 40 seasons, the Caps have employed only three general managers, and their hockey operations staff is liberally dotted with personnel who've been with the organization for a decade or longer. As the Caps announce some alterations in their organizational structure on Monday, three of the organization's hockey operations stalwarts will see their roles change, and it comes as no surprise that no one is actually departing.

Monumental Sports and Entertainment typically announces promotions around this time every year at all levels of its organizational ladder, and we learned today that Brian MacLellan will oversee all hockey operations functions as president of hockey operations and general manager. The Caps have also promoted Chris Patrick to associate general manager and they've appointed Dick Patrick as chairman of the Capitals.

MacLellan, who turns 65 in October, is the most successful general manager in the team's history and he owns the third-best points percentage (.640) in League history among all GMs with 500 or more games. When Washington won the Stanley Cup in 2018, MacLellan became just the seventh person to win the Cup as a full-time player and manager, and the first to do so in 19 years. MacLellan is now the fifth-longest tenured manager in the League, having taken the reins in May of 2014. Of the four NHL managers who have been on the job longer than MacLellan, none has been with his organization as long as MacLellan has been with Washington.

After concluding a 10-year NHL playing career in 1992, MacLellan earned an MBA in finance from the University of St. Thomas and went to work in the business world. A few years later, then-Caps GM George McPhee - a childhood friend of MacLellan's and a teammate at Bowling Green and with the New York Rangers - reached out to see if he might have interest in some part-time scouting work from Minnesota, where he still maintains a residence.

MacLellan found that he liked the scouting work and liked being back in the hockey world, so he soon went full-time as a scout. In 2003, the Caps promoted him to director of player personnel and GM of their AHL affiliate, which was still situated in Portland, Maine at the time.

"I knew it was what I wanted to do," MacLellan told us upon earning that initial promotion 20 years ago. "It's a great opportunity and an opportunity to work with someone I know and like and trust. It was more of a no-brainer than anything else."

A few seasons later, MacLellan was named assistant general manager, player personnel, and he held that post until he was named to succeed McPhee in 2014. During a west coast trip in 2011, we had a chance to speak with MacLellan, by then more than a decade into his second career in hockey. He mentioned then that staying in the game had never been on his radar during his playing days.

"No, not at all," he said. "I wanted to be a stock analyst. And I went back to school, I got an MBA and actually I was working in that industry for five years. And then I ended up liking [scouting] when I was doing it part-time, so I switched, just as I was getting established in my other career."

MacLellan's transition from analyzing stocks to analyzing hockey players was fairly seamless, and there are some similarities between the two fields.

"I spent a lot of time with the firm I was with analyzing investment managers' processes, how they find companies," he recalled. "They all have a definite process in what they look for in a stock and in buying a particular company. And they also have a sell process where if a stock gets valued at a certain level and it's overpriced, they sell it. They have an automatic sell. So I think my analytical skills in that area; I can put a number on a player and know where he should be valued, and if he's overvalued or undervalued. I think it helps give a perspective to our overall team [salary] cap-wise."

It was MacLellan's organizational knowledge and familiarity with the team's strengths, weaknesses and needs that enabled him to emerge as a dark horse candidate to replace McPhee some nine years ago, and once he was in the manager's chair, he went straight to work. Weeks into his tenure as manager, MacLellan inked free agents Brooks Orpik and Matt Niskanen. A year later, he added T.J. Oshie in a trade with the Blues.

Washington finally won the Stanley Cup in 2018. Under MacLellan, the Caps made the playoffs eight straight seasons before missing out on the postseason this past spring. Now, with the Caps on the cusp of celebrating their 50th anniversary in the NHL (in 2024-25), he will oversee the hockey operations department.

More than two decades into his second career in hockey, MacLellan retains an appreciation for what he does and for the day-to-day existence in the game. During that long - and long ago - west coast road trip, MacLellan spent a lot of time with the Caps' coaching staff of that day, hockey lifers who had not worked outside the game.

"I've been hanging out with the assistant coaches for the last week here, and just watching how much fun they have on game days and at practice, and how enjoyable it is for them," he said then. "I was just making sure they appreciated it because I worked five or six years in a corporate environment where you go into an office, and you've got a desk and a computer and you're there at six and you leave at six. You're in Saturday mornings for a little bit and you get two weeks off.

"I was just making sure they were appreciating it because I've had the chance to experience both."

Chris Patrick has spent a decade and a half working his way up and through the organizational ladder, following a similar path to MacLellan in taking some time away to obtain an advanced degree and gain some experience in the business world. But hockey isn't just in Patrick's blood, it's in his DNA. His family has had a prominent, continuous and innovative relationship with the game for well over a century now.

After starting in the area player development in 2008-09, Chris Patrick moved into a pro scouting role in 2010-11 and ascended to the team's director of player personnel in 2015, also taking responsibility for the Caps' ongoing relationship with the team's AHL Hershey affiliate. In his new role, Patrick will be overseeing the team's analytics department, player contract negotiations, the hockey operations staff, player personnel and budget and team scheduling matters. Patrick will also maintain his previous responsibilities of maintaining the Caps' end of the Washington/Hershey affiliation and all that entails.

Dick Patrick becomes chairman of the Capitals almost exactly 41 years after he first became involved with the team as a minority owner and executive vice president during the "Save The Caps" summer of 1982. Patrick's first task upon joining the organization was to hire a general manager, and he hit it out of the park in giving a 33-year-old David Poile his first chance to manage an NHL club. Poile just retired as the GM of the Nashville Predators, concluding a career in which he was employed as an NHL GM for 41 consecutive seasons, the most in NHL history.

Each of the three GMs Patrick hired has had a run of 10 or more seasons on the job. Patrick will serve as a close advisor to both Ted Leonsis and MacLellan, and he will always be available to them to lend his considerable experience and guidance.

"He is a great man and a great friend, and Dick is the highest integrity, highest fidelity person imaginable," said Leonsis last year. "He honestly says what he means, and he means what he says. And while he is a man of few words, they have lots of impact. And he's one of the funniest guys I've ever been around. He has worn very well on me, and I have so much trust in him that I I've told him, 'It's your team,' even though he's a smaller shareholder. He really runs the team. And that's why we trust them so much like it's his team. I've never worried about his motivations; his motivations have always been the game, the League, the Caps.

"I just hope that Dick never retires. I hope he continues. We go to every game together, we meet often, and I just find him and his judgment to be rock, rock solid. And I trust no one more in my business with making decisions than Dick."