When we had our sell off to rebuild our team, we made some extremely painful personnel decisions. We had to trade older great players, fan favorites and great people for young prospects. We took great risk. We rightly received a lot of fan hate mail and media criticism.
We realized that several of our players would soon be retired or be on the downside of their career. And if we wanted to rebuild around youth, we would need to make some trades. We would have to get bad so we could get good by scoring some high draft picks and by developing young prospects. Without the sell off, we wouldn’t have Alexander Ovechkin, Mike Green and Nicklas Backstrom as examples of the efficacy of that strategy to build around the draft. Alex Semin, Jeff Schultz and Eric Fehr were also draft picks for our team as further example of the power of the draft. Brooks Laich was a second round pick for Ottawa. We made a trade to send Peter Bondra to Ottawa in hopes that he would join a contender and perhaps win a Stanley Cup. We got what first appeared to be a throw in prospect in Brooks Laich in return. Peter Bondra is now retired and is GM of the Slovakia team. You can meet him in the arena and we are friends for life with him. Peter is one of our most celebrated former players and one of my favorite players in Caps history. Nothing will ever take away what Peter did for our franchise. But time moves on. Brooks Laich is now a young player coming into his own. He will score 20 goals this year. He is a heart and soul kind of player; a young leader in the locker room; a big, fast, strong skater; and an important contributor to the new set of Caps players and prospects that I am hopeful will grow into a championship caliber team. He is growing up with the team and improving and has upside which is what we contemplated with our moves pre-lockout. Brooks is also becoming a media favorite and a fan favorite. I am proud of him and proud of our pro scouts who specifically asked for him by name in the trade.
While we’re on the subject of getting young, big, strong guys on the Caps, can we get a defenseman in here who really likes to bodycheck? Especially someone with a bit of a mean streak who likes to catch opponents carrying the puck in open ice with their head down? Someone who will really step into them and send them flying? Long time ago, the Bruins had a defenseman named Ferny Flaman who did that regularly, and I still remember the roars when he did. Scott Stevens did some of that too, but not the way Flaman did it. Hitting guys along the boards is great, but it’s not anywhere near as great as a really good open-ice hit.
Maybe I’m being naive but hate mail is never “rightly received”.
Good article, but wasn’t Laich Ottawa’s 6th round choice (193rd overall) in 2001, and not a 2nd round pick? It kinda reads like you mixed up two thoughts, there.
It’s been fun seeing this team grow up. Go Caps!
I wasn’t happy when the trade was made in 2003-04 as I didn’t want Bonzai to leave. I was happy though that we did get Brooks Laich in the deal. I had actually heard about him before the trade and knew he was a real character guy (and a character). It is kind of nice that Brooks wears Peter’s number in reverse (21) since their paths crossed in an interesting way. Who knows, one day in 2010′s we may have to hang 21 from the rafters next to 7, 5, 32, 12, 37 and 8 (yeah, I’m projecting the last 3, but I really expect those numbers won’t be worn by anyone else here in DC).
So how long before Peter’s jersey is hanging from the rafters?
Ted:
It is past time to retire #12. If we can’t make it happen in the remaining games this season, then it should be planned for October 2008.
Laich was a terrific junior, and I’m not surprised at all to see him finally blossom into a contributer. A great leader, and someone the Caps should keep around.
But do note that he was actually a sixth-round pick by the Senators.
I’m sure i was one of the fans that sent you angry emails and i apologize for it. I was a frustrated longtime caps fan. Was at every single multiple ot playoff loss to Pittsburgh, Tampa, NYI. It’s different now you can feel momentum turning our way as a Caps fan. I couldn’t be more excited about this team right now. I’m more excited about this team and the prsopects for the future than any local team including the Redskins. Caps hockey will be in great shape for a long time. You took a calculated risk and it’s going to pay off exponetially. I couldn’t be happier about this teams future. Go Caps!
That trade broke my 6th grade heart when it happened. I even held a completely unfair grudge against Laichie for some time. Now i have his jersey and feel a jolt of excitement every time he’s on the ice. Given your high praise about Bondra i hope to see his jersey retired soon. I think we can both agree that he deserves it.
It’s become such a common thing for Caps fans to see Laich in front of the net while a goal is scored. Whether he gets the goal, or gets the assist is irrelevant. He’s the source of a great deal of grief to the opponents goalie, and the Caps have a good history of these types of players. You can’t win in the NHL without them.
it seems for some people they can’t grasp the conceptof “you can’t make an omllet without cracking a few eggs”nobody stays on top forever and we are on the way up
Brooks is having a spectacular year. As someone who’s been hard on him in the past, I’m glad to see him really blossom this year. Let’s go Caps!
I understand the ‘growth’.. but it would have been nice to sign Bondra to a one day deal, so he could have retired a Cap! That said, we ended up with some great young players.. who will hopefully stay with the team until they retire.