Vegas GM McPhee built Capitals first
George McPhee is happy to talk about the Vegas Golden Knights, the team he built over the last year that now sits four wins from an improbable Stanley Cup.
But his old club? The one that stands in the way? Not so much.
As the Knights prepare to host the Washington Capitals in Game 1 of the final Monday, McPhee’s fingerprints are everywhere on the series.
While the Vegas general manager’s shrewd moves in the expansion draft have been welldocumented, he also laid the groundwork for the Capitals’ success, even though he wasn’t around to see it through.
Washington’s GM for 17 seasons, McPhee drafted 12 of the players on the current roster that beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-0 on the road in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final.
McPhee’s Capitals made it all the way to the Cup in 1998 before getting swept by Detroit in his first season in charge, but never again got past the second round before he was fired in April 2014.
Four years later, and to almost everyone’s surprise, McPhee’s new team and McPhee’s old team — one that has suffered so much playoff heartbreak — are the only clubs left standing.
“It’s a script that no one saw being written,” he said in a phone interview earlier this week. “We’re not supposed to be here.”
But the man that drafted Alex Ovechkin, Braden Holtby, Nicklas Backstrom, Evgeny Kuznetsov, John Carlson and a host of other Capitals, didn’t have any time to reflect on his own personal journey when it became clear Vegas would be facing Washington.
“I was just trying to be analytical,” said McPhee, choosing his words carefully. “Right now it’s just more about our club and what we’re going to have to do in the next couple of weeks rather than rooting for or pulling for or wishing for an opponent.”