The Washington Capitals introduced Chris Patrick as the team’s seventh general manager in franchise history on Tuesday. Patrick is taking the reigns from the 65-year-old Brian MacLellan, who is stepping out of his day-to-day role with the team and moving into a overseeing role as president of hockey operations.
Patrick will now represent the Capitals at the NHL’s General Managers’ meetings and will become the primary point of contact for other NHL GMs. Since taking over the role of associate general manager last summer, Patrick already oversaw the team’s analytics department, player contract negotiations, hockey operations staff, player personnel, budget and team scheduling matters, and the Capitals’ affiliate relationships.
The 48-year-old Patrick intends to build on MacLellan’s work over the last few seasons, retooling the team as it transitions to a new core. The team has sold at two straight trade deadlines, prioritizing draft picks over veteran assets, while acquiring younger talent to set up for the future.
Patrick held his first press conference as Capitals GM on Tuesday at District E in Washington DC. Joining Patrick on stage was MacLellan; his father and chairman of the club, Dick Patrick; and team owner Ted Leonsis. When asked how he envisioned the Caps’ future, Patrick told reporters he had high expectations.
“My intention is to be competitive,” he said. “I’m not a guy that likes losing. And I truly believe that we can transition, for lack of a better term, past the (Alex) Ovechkin era with a competitive team.
“I think we’ve made a statement already with what we’ve done in this offseason,” he continued. “It’s easy for people to say, ‘Your superstars are aging. It’s time to rebuild, blow it up, do it all over again.’ In actuality, that can be a lot harder than it sounds. And I think you’ve seen a lot of teams try it and kind of get stuck in an endless cycle of tearing down and building up and tearing down and building up and never getting where they want to be. And I think you can also look at some teams that have not done that and [have] had success.”
Patrick’s tenure as general manager begins after a borderline season saw the Capitals barely squeak into the playoffs. Washington clinched a playoff spot in their final game of the regular season before a New York Rangers sweep sent them packing.
Ovechkin, 38, finally saw age regression, notching only 31 goals in 79 games. The Capitals captain began the year by scoring eight goals in his first 43 games (0.19 G/GP). He finished the second half of the campaign with 22 goals in his last 32 games (0.69 G/GP), helping push the team to its unlikely playoff berth.
Over an aggressive offseason, the Capitals’ front office made it a priority to find more support for Ovechkin and his fellow veterans. Washington acquired seven roster players for the NHL roster, including potential big contributors in center Pierre-Luc Dubois, winger Andrew Mangiapane, and defensemen Jakob Chychrun and Matt Roy. The moves aimed to shore up the Capitals’ top-six forward and top-four defense groups after their lackluster performance in 2023-24.
“Looking at some of the moves we did here, obviously getting Pierre-Luc Dubois, it’s definitely a risk, but I think we feel pretty comfortable about it,” Patrick said. “And so you get a guy that could potentially be a really good player for you for a lot of years that’s just turned 26. I think we’re starting to build in that kind of next age group of players, like Dylan Strome, and that age level. And then you’ve got the next level below that with Connor (McMichael) and Aliaksei Protas.
“And then you’ve got the guys that just finished up winning a couple of championships at Hershey, and then a couple of drafts worth of guys. So I think you’ve got layers of good players coming, which you see they’re going to help the team on the ice, or it’s going to help the team get a player to help them on the ice. So I think we’re as well positioned as we’ve been in a long time from a prospect and talent pool.”
Before Patrick’s promotion, the Capitals’ front office included MacLellan and Patrick as well as Ross Mahoney, who holds the role of assistant general manager and focuses primarily on prospects and scouting. As MacLellan described it, acquiring players has been a group process even before Patrick’s promotion.
“We worked hard over the last month to prepare for [the offseason] and executed it,” MacLellan said. “I think credit goes to our whole group, pro staff, Chris, myself, everybody that was in the room, analytics guys.”
Despite the new titles, the Capitals do not envision the front office’s methodology changing much, if at all.
“Anything we do, Mac and I spend a lot of time talking about it,” Patrick said. “Anything, sending a guy down, bringing a guy up. And that was no different with this current process. That’s how I envisioned things going forward. I’ll be making the calls and doing some of the legwork, but it’s still the same process. We’re going to be grinding it out on the phone or in person over every move we make.”
Patrick views that level of collaboration as a strength of the organization, with analytics, scouting, and video review all playing a role in the process.
“I actually love the way our group approaches it and I don’t know how it compares to a lot of other teams,” he added. “When we are looking at a trade deadline or free agency, we have analytics, we have pro staff in the room, and we all talk the same language. The pro guys have learned the metrics and the data that the analytic guys value and can speak their language. The analytics side respects what the pro side does and respects their reads. I think 90 percent of the time we come out at the same spot. Sometimes there are discrepancies and that’s when you pull up the video, you watch it, and try to figure it out. We do a lot of time doing that. It’s a very methodical process. I think you have to trust the eye and you have to trust the numbers and if they don’t agree, then you roll up your sleeves and get to work.”
With Patrick ending his tenure as associate general manager, other members of the team’s staff will see their roles grow. Jason Fitzsimmons, director of minor league operations, will take charge of managing the Caps’ relationship with the Hershey Bears, while head pro scout and former Capitals forward Brian Sutherby will take over Patrick’s former duties in the scouting department.
Patrick’s first real taste of his new daily duties won’t come until Rookie Camp and Training Camp in September. There, he, head coach Spencer Carbery, and other members of the team’s staff will need to draw up the team’s final 23-man roster ahead of opening night. Patrick anticipates things will be slow until then.
“I don’t know if we have any money left (for me) to put a signature move on, but I think now, this is when the league is a little quiet,” he said. “I think teams are trying to finish up whatever RFAs they have left. I think there’s 14 or 15 players that filed for arbitration, so they got to work through that stuff. And August gets pretty quiet. I think there’ll be some opportunities here and there for maybe some smaller things, but we’ll just kind of weigh them as they come in. And really, I don’t anticipate much until training camp, and we’ll see where we are.”
Patrick feels the pressure to succeed. A Capitals fan all his life, he was just six years old when his father joined the organization. Chris played for the Little Capitals as a child, joining the NHL organization as a player when then-GM David Poile selected him in the eighth round of 1994 draft. When his playing career flamed out, Patrick went into finance before deciding to take a huge pay cut to return to hockey as a scout.
The Patrick family is something of a hockey dynasty, featuring seven Stanley Cup champions and four Hockey Hall of Famers (Lester, Frank, Lynn, and Craig). When the Capitals won the Stanley Cup in 2018, Dick and Chris became the sixth and seventh members of the family to have their names etched on the NHL’s championship trophy.
On top of that, the Capitals have only missed the postseason four times since Ovechkin entered the league in 2005. Two of those occasions came during The Great Eight’s freshman and sophomore campaigns. During Ovechkin’s 19 years pro, Washington has won 10 division championships, three Presidents’ Trophies, and one Stanley Cup.
Whatever ends up happening, Patrick would like to avoid a long, painful moment in team history as the Capitals reload for the future.
“I think you can look at some teams that have not [completely rebuilt] and had success that were able to transition from an older core to a younger team that’s competitive. So I think that is definitely on the table for us,” Patrick said. “I think we positioned ourselves to be able to pivot either way if we want.”
