Washington Capitals draft guide: 2026 picks and draft history

The Washington Capitals got the best players in franchise history through the entry draft: Ovechkin, Backstrom, Wilson, Holtby, and Carlson were all first-round Caps picks before they became champions. The draft is both critically important and very complicated. Herem for the first time, is RMNB’s comprehensive guide to the Washington Capitals at the NHL draft.

We’ll explain how the draft works, the Caps’ drafting strategy, what picks have worked out, which picks were misses, which pick resulted in the worst trade in franchise history, and finally an answer to the question: are the Caps good at drafting?

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Washington Capitals at the 2026 draft

The NHL entry draft will be held on June 26 and 27, 2026, in Buffalo, New York. RMNB’s Ian Oland will be on site.

Until June 23rd, the Washington Capitals were on track to pick twice in the first round of the draft. Last time they did so, they got Tom Wilson and Filip Forsberg, who will one day combine for more than 2,000 games played – but only about half of them for Washington.

That won’t happen now, as the Caps traded their first pick –the 16th overall – to St Louis in a package for Jordan Kyrou.

They won’t pick again until the fourth round — at 112th overall, having traded picks for Jakob Chychrun (worth) and Justin Sourdif (probably worth). The Caps’ sixth-round pick went to Vancouver for David Kampf, who played all of 18 minutes for Washington. We don’t want to talk about it.

Speaking to the media before the draft, assistant general manager Ross Mahoney stated what the Caps want:

• a bigger defenseman, and
• a bigger center.

Keep that in mind.

Caps 2026 draft picks

The value column is a percentage, relative to the historical quality of a first-overall pick (i.e., 1.0), crudely adapted from the work of Dawson Sprigings, best known as a one-time guest blogger for RMNB, but also director of analytics for the Colorado Avalanche.

Round	Overall	Value*
1st	16th	Traded to STL
1st	18th	0.46
4th	112nd	0.12
5th	144th	0.07
7th	208th	0.00

The Caps dealt away their first pick, along with Connor McMichael and a prospect, to acquire Jordan Kyrou from the St. Louis Blues.

With the 18th overall pick, given the available players and Washington’s needs, RMNB’s Chris Cerullo likes these names: righty defenders Ryan Lin, Tommy Bleyl, and Juho Piiparinen (a Finn!); wingers Nikita Klepov and JP Hurlbert; and centers Brooks Rogowski, Maddox Dagenais, Oliver Suvanto, Alexander Command, and Ilya Morozov. Chris explains what’s to like and love about those prospects in his article:

NHL draft rules

First, just so we’re clear: the draft is bad. Players should choose where they live and play, and teams should have to compete with each other to win their favor. The draft is anti-labor.

Now that that’s settled. Every summer, the NHL holds an entry draft, wherein teams take turns calling dibs on young – usually 18-year-old – players. The eligibility rules are complicated and usually not important.

The best picks in the first round of the draft are subject to a lottery, where the worst teams in the league depend on weighted random chance to determine who gets the top picks. The worst team of the regular season has about a 25 percent chance of picking first overall. There are a bunch of arcane rules about how many spots up and down a team can jump as part of the lottery. Those rules are complicated, but unlike eligibility, they are often very important.

Once we get out of the lottery, the rest of the picks go in worst-to-first order, with the playoff teams re-sorted based on their regular-season and postseason success.

The draft has seven rounds. Each team gets one pick per round, but trades are common, and draft strategy is complex – a combination of amateur scouting, historical analysis, and full-on game theory. In some cases, anti-Finnish sentiment is also considered in draft selection.

The first round of the draft is televised, with televised presentations for every pick, and takes several hours. The rest are lightning-round style.

Players who get drafted aren’t automatically on that team. They’ll often attend prospect camps, but most won’t play for the big club just yet. If a player doesn’t sign within a specific number of years, depending on which league they were drafted from, the drafting team loses their rights. There are complex exceptions there, too, go figure.

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Washington’s secret no-Finns-allowed rule

The Capitals have not drafted a player from Finland since Oskar Osala in 2006. The last time the Caps picked a Finn, the iPhone didn’t exist. More often than not, there are zero Finnish players in the organization.

The Caps have picked 123 times since their last Finnish player. There are only 195 countries in the world, give or take, and most don’t even play much hockey.

Will the streak break in 2026? There are three Finns in the top 20 of common prospect rankings: Oliver Suvanto, Juho Piiparinen, and Oscar Hemming. Watch this space.

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Washington Capitals draft history

And now, a summary of every Caps draft of the Ovechkin era – and beyond? Included with each draft pick is a highly subjective grade assigned by your humble but experienced author.

2004: Tanking for Ovechkin

Following one of the most dramatic fire sales of this century, the Capitals tanked and won the draft lottery to secure the first overall pick. They went with the consensus favorite: Alexander Ovechkin of Moscow, Russia.

Simply put: Alex Ovechkin is the most significant hockey player of the century so far.

The Caps had three first-round picks in 2004, so they also selected two defenders: Mike Green and Jeff Schultz, who went on to become core blueliners for the team within a few years. Green probably should have won the Norris trophy in 2009. (It went to Zdeno Chara instead; okay, not a bad choice either.)

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2005: Swing and a miss

One year later and still flush from the fire sale, the Caps had two more first-round picks and whiffed on both. Joe Finley was a big boy, but his impact on the sport is now remembered for:

• chucking a lawnmower at his neighbor
• slashing the leg of Bucky Badger, the mascot of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Finley managed to play 21 NHL games. He was a minus-8 and racked up 32 penalty minutes. Their other first-round pick, defender Sasha Pokulok, never even suited up at the NHL level. Nor did four of their five later-round picks, the exception being left-winger Tim Kennedy, who part-timed for Buffalo, Florida, San Jose, and Phoenix until 2014.

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2006: Ovechkin’s BFF: Nicklas Backstrom

Yet again with two first-round picks, but this time the Capitals nailed it. They picked up Sweden’s Nicklas Backstrom fourth overall (after Erik Johnson, Jordan Staal, and Jonathan Toews). Backstrom served as Washington’s top-line center for about a decade – and quarterback of the power play (apologies to Mike Green and John Carlson, but the PP was run from Backstrom’s side) for about as long.

When the Caps won the Cup in 2018, the team’s 2004 first-round pick (Ovi) handed the Cup to the team’s 2006 first-round pick (Backe). So that worked out nicely.

The team’s next two picks were both goalies. Russian Semyon Varlamov was selected late in the first round, and Czech Michal Neuvirth came early in the second. Varlamov played three years in Washington, including a couple of dramatic postseasons. He was a Vezina finalist in 2014, when he played for Colorado. Pouty-faced Neuvirth clocked six seasons with the Caps, mostly as backup. He famously once called Braden Holtby his “weakest competition yet” in a Czech-language interview. (RMNB paid a translation company 700 dollars to verify our translation of that quote was accurate, and we were broke as hell at the time.)

More than a hundred picks later, the Caps struck gold. Mathieu Perreault of the QMJHL was picked in the 6th round. He became a fresh-faced fan favorite in DC, a hard-working but undersized grinder, and he went on to play 708 NHL games, including a long stint in Winnipeg, who made him scary-looking.

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2007: Only one hit, but it was an iron man

Good draft in ’04, bad draft in ’05, good draft in ’06, so here comes another bad draft in ’07 – with the exception of the team’s first-round pick, defender Karl Alzner, selected fifth overall.

Alzner was an institution: un-flashy but always dependable, with good gap control and even better constitution. Alzner played 622 games without missing a night between 2009 and 2018.

He also had – and this is important – two mischievous dogs.

From the team’s nine other picks that summer, zero NHL games were ever played. I think one of them was the great-nephew of Mud Brunetau.

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2008: Two of the greatest position players in team history

The Caps once again had two first-round picks, though both were in the 20’s. One was Anton Gustafsson, and that’s all you need to know about him. The other is the greatest (and most controversial?) defender in franchise history: John Carlson, picked 27th overall, after marquee names such as Colten Teubert, Joe Colborne, Chet Pickard, Mattias Tedenby, and Greg Nemisz had already been taken off the board.

Carlson was an offensive defender: a master puck-mover, a neutral-zone carrier himself when he was younger, and a mean shot. Carlson scored 360 points in his 575 games with Washington. Carlson scored five goals and added 15 assists in the 2018 Cup championship run.

Sixty-six picks later, the Caps nabbed the greatest goalie in Caps history, Braden Holtby, pride of Lloydminster, Saskatchewan. Holtby defeated Neuvirth in the aforementioned ‘weakest competition yet’ to become the starting goalie for the Caps, a position he retained for almost a decade, during which he won a Vezina (2016), a Jennings (2017), and a Stanley (2018).

It’s hard to remember now, but Holtby’s 2018 regular season was not great. He wasn’t even the starter going into the postseason; Philipp Grubauer was. Holtby took over in the first round and heated up all the way to June. He hand-delivered the team to the Stanley Cup Final by shutting out the Tampa Bay Lightning, the most offensively potent team that season, in back-to-back games. Also a champion for LGBTQIA+ rights and an okay guitar player, Holtby is a Caps legend. Everyone loves him. For good reason.

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2009: Got their mojo working

The Caps’ regular-season success continued as the “Young Guns” or “Rock the Red” era began, which meant later first-round picks for the team. They managed very well, nonetheless, getting two players who will have 2,000 games combined very soon.

Marcus Johansson is an understated Swede who was elite at zone entries, even if his finishing left a bit to be desired. “Mojo” had two stints in Washington: from 2010 to 2017, then back from 2021 to 2023. (He also played in Minnesota in two stints; must be a creature of habit.)

Johansson was one of the two legendary Swedes on Bikes.

The fact that Russian D Dmitry Orlov was for so long considered a second-pairing D spoke to how strong the Caps’ blue line was for so long. Orlov was another great puck-mover with a powerful but underused shot. And about once per season, he’d unleash the most vicious hip check you’ve seen in your entire life.

Deeper in the draft were Cody Eakin, who managed a decent career mostly in Dallas, and a number of Hershey mainstays. Lots of respectable players there, but none that made an impact for Washington.

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2010: The enigma

With apologies to Alex Semin, the most enigmatic player in Caps franchise history was selected late in the first round of the 2010 draft. Evgeny Kuznetsov, the bird man himself, was a bright-eyed teen when he first put on a Caps jersey and peeked through a curtain at a silly photo op.

Kuzy scored 171 goals for the Caps and had a reasonable shot to win the Conn Smythe trophy for playoff MVP in 2018. He had an elaborate, lugubrious, frustrating shootout technique that was surprisingly effective. On occasion, he would play defense. But with the right support, he was a game-breaking force — and a main driver of Washington’s freakish ability to score more goals than expected for almost ten seasons in a row.

Things ended badly with Kuznetsov. He was suspended for drug use and ostracized for unreliable play. He was rumored to be on the trading block for years before he finally ended up in Carolina, where he did near-nothing for 20 games. Kuznetsov returned to the KHL and has been equally mercurial back in his home country. Still a legend.

Grubauer had tons of potential. He took over the starting spot for struggling Braden Holtby in 2017-18, only to give it back again in the playoffs. The next season, he moved to Colorado, a very good defensive team, and became a Vezina finalist in 2021. Then he moved to Seattle and has been virtually unplayable for that expansion team ever since — until a resurgent 2025-26 season.

Stanislav “Stas” Galiev was really giving with his time to RMNB in our early days. Although gifted and carrying a stack of sick highlights, Galiev was gaunt for his height (6′ 1″) and struggled to get in the lineup. He maxed out at 24 games in 2015-16, punctuated by time in Hershey.

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2011: The un-draft

The Caps’ draft assets were depleted after loading up for a few doomed playoff runs, so the summer of ’11 was quiet. Every team in the league picked – and then picked again – a player before GM George McPhee got his turn.

The only player of note in this draft was Travis Boyd, a reliable call-up depth forward who spent most of his time in Hershey aside from a spot in Toronto and a longer stint with the Coyotes.

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2012: What could have been?

We have now arrived at the most controversial draft in Capitals history – not because of the players picked – three great players in the first three rounds – but because of what became of them.

We begin with Tom Wilson, the chiseled face of the franchise, aside from no. 8. At the time of his draft, Wilson possessed the one skill you cannot teach: big. Wilson was already outgrowing the Ontario Hockey League at the time of his selection. He was NHL-ready early, but his early seasons in the bigs were a mess.

Under head coach Adam Oates, Wilson was one of the least-used rookies in NHL history, playing in all 82 games but averaging just under 8 minutes in them and fighting 14 times. It took six seasons for his team to recognize what he’s capable of – namely scoring. He’s become a 30-goal scorer, all-star, and Olympic player for Team Canada – plus owner of the first Olympic Gordie Howe Hat Trick. He’ll likely be the team captain for the Capitals before long.

And then there’s Filip Forsberg, a wholly different kind of player but special in his own way. Forsberg wasn’t undersized, eventually hitting 6′,1″, 205 lbs, but he was far less physical. He made up for it with playmaking and finishing talent, which you surely have seen a ton of if you live in the greater Nashville area.

Less than one year after the draft, the Caps traded Forsberg to the Nashville Predators in exchange for Martin Erat and Michael Latta. On the day of the trade, we wrote:

This is a bad trade.

We were right. Forsberg-Erat is the worst trade in Caps history. Erat scored two goals for the Caps in his 62 games. Filip Forsberg has scored 356 goals and counting for Nashville.

Here, this bar graph will help:

The throw-in in that trade, Michael Latta, was arguably more impactful than Erat. He played 113 games for the Caps as a grinder and had altogether too much ketchup in the refrigerator he shared with roommate Tom Wilson.

The Caps didn’t fire general manager George McPhee for another two years, but you have to think this day was the first bullet point in the list of justifications to let him go.

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2013: Two important parts of the Cup championship

If you can’t say Swedish forward Andre Burakovsky is a fan favorite, at least you can say he’s an RMNB favorite. Picked late in the first round, Burakovsky became a full-time NHLer two years later. Tall but slim, Burakovsky’s production relied on finishing (i.e., individual shooting percentage), which evaded him for most of his time in Washington. His brightest moment was scoring two goals in the second period of the final game of the Eastern Conference Final against Tampa. Actually, maybe it was just his second brightest moment.

Defender Madison Bowey, selected in the second round, made his NHL debut for the big club in 2017-18, which had a famously poor regular season before the magical playoffs. The Caps were outscored 24 to 19 in Bowey’s shifts before he got benched and replaced by trade acquisition Michal Kempny. That swap on the blueline was transformative for the team, but it was still addition by subtraction for the player.

Bowey was gone the next year. He played for a series of tanking to just-plain-bad teams until exiting the league in 2022.

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2014: Overindexing on Czechs

In the first year of GM Brian MacLellan’s tenure, and thanks to Adam Oates’s yikes coaching, the Caps had their highest draft pick since 2012 (Forsberg). With the 13th selection, the Caps chose Jakub Vrana.

Vrana had a similar profile to Burakovsky, smaller, but with the same slow-developing talent for finishing chances. Vrana never cracked 30 goals per season with Washington or anywhere else, but he came through in the clutch in the 2018 Stanley Cup Playoffs, scoring two game-winning goals in the Pittsburgh series (games 2 and 5).

The Caps traded Vrana to Detroit in 2021 as part of a package for Anthony Mantha, a complicated trade that still leaves some fans feeling conflicted. A year and a half later, Vrana entered the player assistance program with substance abuse issues. He had a hard time re-establishing himself after that, though he did return to DC for 26 games in 2024-25 (7 goals, 4 assists, 11 points).

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2015: Two part-timers on the back end

Russian goalie Ilya Samsonov made a big splash in his first season, 2019-20, putting up a .913 all-situation save percentage while backing up Holtby. He declined every season until bottoming out in 2021-22 with 12.1 goals saved worse than expected. The Caps made a savvy move in letting him go in free agency. He left the NHL after the 2024-25 season.

Lanky Swiss defender Jonas Siegenthaler never really earned a full-time slot for the Caps. He played 97 games over three seasons before the Caps dealt him to New Jersey for a third-round pick. Siegenthaler blossomed and became a crucial player on a team that held Cup aspirations for a few seasons.

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2016: Minor-leaguers only

This was a bad draft for Washington. Lucas Johansen played all of nine games for the Caps (two assists, very light ice time for a defender). Garrett Pilon played three games for the Caps in 2021-22 and even scored a goal. Beck Malenstyn was a tough but unspectacular depth forward for Washington for a few years and is now playing for Buffalo. Axel Jonsson-Fjallby has great hair but couldn’t stick in the big league, even after a second try in Winnipeg.

All three of those players, plus Chase Priskie, have had solid AHL careers.

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2017: Hardly even counts

Four picks. Later rounds. All misses. The Caps could have called in sick to this draft; no one would have noticed.

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2018: Adding defensive depth

Scant weeks after the Capitals won the Stanley Cup, they made plans to shore up their aging defensive core. With the second-to-last pick of the first round, they selected Alex Alexeyev, a big Russian boy whose size (6′, 4″) was maybe his most notable trait. He played two half-seasons for the Caps in 2022-23 and 2023-24, but he couldn’t stick in the lineup. The Caps decided not to give him a qualifying offer, so he signed with the Pittsburgh Penguins, who promptly put him on waivers.

Thirty-five picks later, the Caps got a gamer. Martin Fehervary is understated but has lots of virtues. A speedy rearguard whose defensive skill offsets some of his more offensively gifted blue-line partners, Fehervary has been a mainstay for five years and counting.

Goalie Mitch Gibson spent his time in the Caps system with the Stingrays and Bears, never quite getting an appearance with the big club. He’s still with Hershey, but the Caps no longer have his rights.

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2019: One of the greatest Connor Mc’s around and Pro

Still recovering from a Cup hangover, the Caps had just four picks in the 2019 draft, but unlike 2017, they nailed it.

Connor McMichael took a long time to develop. It seemed like he was reviled by then-Caps coach Peter Laviolette. The puck started favoring him when Spencer Carbery came to town, and McMichael’s emerging offense in 2024-25 (26 goals) powered the Caps to a surprise 1st place finish in the Metropolitan Division. But McMichael’s shooting percentage fell off, casting doubt on his true ceiling. The Caps dealt McMichael to St. Louis as part of the Jordan Kyrou trade.

Bumping on and then bursting up through that ceiling is the 6′, 6″ Belorussian behemoth, Aliaksei Protas. Despite his size, he hasn’t been a big hitter, but he’s tenacious on attack and crashing the opponent’s net. Whatever the best forward line is on the Caps, Protas is probably on it.

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2020: Scant minutes

We’re entering a period of uncertainty, as some of these players’ futures remain unknown. That’s true for the draft pick with the most games played, forward Hendrix Lapierre, who has had a baffling NHL career so far. He played in lots of games but gets fewer minutes, but his underlying stats were marvelous, but his boxcar stats near non-existent – about 0.2 points per game. The Caps traded him to Pittsburgh for a third-round draft pick in a couple years.

The same is true for Bogdan Trineyev, who has been excellent for the Hershey Bears but has suited up for the Caps only twice.

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2021: Virtually nothing

This was another draft for which the Capitals were shorthanded, having dealt assets in years past in trades. Fifty-four picks were made before they got a swing at it.

Because we’re entering more recent seasons, we will give more players “TBD” grades, even if that’s maybe overly charitable.

Vincent Iorio is no longer with the club. He was put on waivers by the Capitals in 2025, claimed by San Jose, who then lost him to the New York Rangers on waivers. In a depth role for both clubs, which are both rebuilding, he recorded 3 assists in 27 games. He has no contract after 2025-26, and it feels unlikely he’ll earn a full-time roster spot in the future.

Brent Johnson, the Gen-Z defender, not to be confused with the Gen-X goalie/watch enthusiast, is now with the Penguins org, spending most of his time in the ECHL.

The Capitals still own exclusive contract rights to college hockey players Joaquim Lemay and Chase Clark, but those rights expire in August. Lemay is still playing with Northeastern, and Clark’s future is less certain.

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2022: The Hershey core

Most of the players selected by the Caps in the 2022 draft are currently playing with Washington’s affiliate teams, the Hershey Bears (AHL), and South Carolina Stingrays (ECHL).

Ivan Miroshnichenko has the longest unhyphenated name in the NHL, but he’s still spending more of his time with the Bears. Ryan Chesley signed an entry-level contract with the Caps in 2025. He had a good season for Hershey, interrupted late by an upper-body injury.

Alexander Suzdalev has produced in the AHL and ECHL, but his ceiling right now seems less than 200 games at the NHL level. Ryan Hofer raised some eyebrows when he scored the ECHL goal of the 2024-25 season. He’s played more for South Carolina than Hershey.

David Gucciardi was one of Hershey’s most oft-used defenders in his rookie campaign, notching 13 points (3g, 10a) in 52 games.

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2023: A scrappy, 20-goal rookie

The Caps seemed to hit big in 2023, snagging one player already in the bigs and another knocking at the door.

The Caps appear to have drafted a true gamer in Ryan Leonard. He drew penalties at a higher rate than all but four NHL forwards and hit 20 goals in his rookie season. His B grade is just a placeholder.

Andrew Cristall has flirted with making the Caps roster out of camp, but remains a key player for Hershey in the meantime. Connor Bedard called him “one of the best players I’ve got to play with. He’s dominated at every level.”

Patrick Thomas signed an entry-level contract in 2025 and worked his way up to Hershey soon after. He scored his first professional goal that October.

Cam Allen has been on a journey. He signed an ELC with the Caps in 2024, was the centerpiece of a blockbuster OHL trade, and then two months later got arrested for drunk driving and leaving the scene of an accident. He scored his first AHL goal at the start of the 2025-26 season.

Goalie Antoine Keller had a brief stint in Hershey but didn’t play, so his contract was terminated to allow him to return to Europe.

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2024: The future of the Caps

First-round pick Terik Parascak toiled away in the WHL, scoring a pair of hat tricks, then got the big call-up to Hershey, but he didn’t play before their 2025-26 season ended.

The Caps got two bona fide NHLers in defender Cole Hutson and big forward Ilya Protas. Both appeared late in the 2025-26 season, and neither looks likely to leave ever again. Hutson scored in his very first game, and Protas racked up points in his short stint.

Leon Muggli got his wish of a roster spot in North America, playing about half the season with the Hershey Bears.

Eriks Mateiko had hoped to play for Latvia at the Olympics, but he suffered an Achilles tear that ended his year early.

Nick Kempf started for Notre Dame last season and played for the US at the WJC.

Petr Sikora was at World Juniors too, winning silver with Czechia. The Caps signed him to an entry-level contract in May.

And yes, technically, the full name of Washington’s 212th pick is Miroslav Satan, Jr. He’s the son of the famed forward of the same name.

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2025: Chris Patrick’s first draft

Chris Patrick took over for Brian MacLellan after the latter’s promotion, making this his debut draft. He had only one first-round pick, and it came late, so it’s hard to draw firm conclusions.

Lakovic missed most of the 2025-26 WHL season after suffering an upper-body injury that required surgery. We’ll see him again at the 2026 training camp as he tries to get his development back on track after a standout 2025 appearance.

Gastrin won World Juniors with Sweden and made his AHL debut in the playoffs, but he was traded to St Louis in the Kyrou/McMichael trade.

Jackson Crowder is the toughest prospect the Washington Capitals have drafted in quite some time, as you can see in an epic USHL fight.

Everyone else is a big TBD.

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So, are the Caps a good drafting team?

Yes, the Caps have been a really good drafting team.

Based on the 128 picks they’ve made from the start of the Ovechkin era up until a couple of years ago, the NHL average for draft success – i.e., playing in 200 games or more – would be 19 players. The Caps have 32.

The wins include home runs like Ovechkin, Backstrom, Carlson, and Holtby – all on the 2018 Cup – but also small-ball singles like Marcus Johansson, Andre Burakovsky, Chandler Stephenson, and Martin Fehervary. They’ve found successes deep in the draft, such as Mathieu Perreault, who was picked 177th overall and played in more than 700 games.

Between 2006 and 2015, the Capitals never missed on a goalie they’ve drafted in the first four rounds. All six of these goalies have played at least 200 games:

• Ilya Samsonov
• Semyon Varlamov
• Michal Neuvirth
• Vitek Vanecek
• Braden Holtby
• Philipp Grubauer

Out of 20 first-round picks, only four were significant misses: Sasha Pokulok, Anton Gustafsson, Joe Finley, and Lucas Johansen. Aside from Johansen (2016), those other whiffs happened more than 15 years ago – or two GMs back.

But, the first-round pick problem!

While Washington has been special at drafting in net, they’ve been trending in a scary direction regarding their first round picks.

Draft	Player	Success?	Now
2004	Alex Ovechkin	Generational star	Immortal?
2004	Jeff Schultz	Yes	Retired
2004	Mike Green	Yes!	Retired
2005	Sasha Pokulok	Mega bust	Obscurity
2005	Joe Finley	Mega bust	No one knows
2006	Nicklas Backstrom	Huge	Retired future HOFer
2006	Semyon Varlamov	Yes	Ex-Vezina, injury limbo
2007	Karl Alzner	Yes	Retired
2008	Anton Gustafsson	No	Retired
2008	John Carlson	Yes!	Still chugging
2009	Marcus Johansson	Yes	Just went back to Sweden
2010	Evgeny Kuznetsov	Yes, for a while	KHL, but barely
2012	Filip Forsberg	Yes, but it’s complicated	Nashville star
2012	Tom Wilson	Yes	Olympian
2013	Andre Burakovsky	Yes	Middle six with CHI
2014	Jakub Vrana	Sorta	Playing in Sweden
2015	Ilya Samsonov	Kinda	Backup goalie for NYI
2016	Lucas Johansen	No	AHL
2018	Alexander Alexeyev	No	AHL
2019	Connor McMichael	Maybe a little?	St. Louis
2020	Hendrix Lapierre	Not really	Pittsburgh
2022	Ivan Miroshnichenko	TBD	Between AHL and NHL
2023	Ryan Leonard	So far so good	Future Caps star?
2024	Terik Parascak	TBD	WHL
2025	Lynden Lakovic	TBD	WHL

So whatever heights of success they reaped during the Bush and Obama administrations, the Caps have seen their first-round picks fizzle pretty much every year since 2014.

We’ll see if that luck changes.