The Caps had two first-round picks, three in the first 43, and seven picks in the first 85. Yet in retrospect, they came up virtually empty with the exception of second round center Jan Bulis. Only the top three of Washington's dozen choices ever played in the NHL and only Bulis had a reasonably prosperous career.
Power winger Alexander Volchkov was taken with the fourth overall choice, a pick obtained from Los Angeles a year earlier in the deal for Dmitri Khristich and Byron Dafoe. The Volchkov pick turned into a complete disaster; he played fewer NHL games (three) than any other fourth overall pick in the modern draft era (since 1969). Among other fourth overall picks over the years: Rick MacLeish, Steve Shutt, Lanny McDonald, Clark Gillies, Mike Gartner, Larry Murphy, Ron Francis, Steve Yzerman, Paul Kariya and Roberto Luongo.
Jaroslav "Yogi" Svejkovsky was chosen with the 17th overall pick. He showed flashes of brilliance and scored four goals in a game as a 20-year-old in the final regular season game of the 1996-97 season. He failed to earn a regular spot in Washington and was later shuttled to Tampa Bay in exchange for a pair of draft picks.
Other first rounders in 1996 include J-P Dumont (third overall), Ruslan Salei (ninth), Derek Morris (13th), Dainius Zubrus (15th), Marco Sturm (21st) and Daniel Briere (24th).
Notables taken later in the proceedings include Cory Sarich (27th), Matt Cullen (35th), Colin White (49th), Zdeno Chara (56th), Tom Poti (59th), Mark Parrish (79th), Toni Lydman (89th), Matt Bradley (102nd), Michal Rozsival (105th), Sami Pahlsson (176th), Pavel Kubina (179th), Willie Mitchell (199th), Tomas Kaberle (204th) and Sami Salo (239th). Only two players were chosen after Salo.
Hindsight is 20/20: Overall, this was a fairly thin pool of talent. But oddly, many later members of the Caps' organization came from the 1996 draft class. So if the team had just chosen some of these players with its original picks, it could have spared itself some of the paperwork and negotiations needed to bring them to DC later. Here's the list: Zubrus, Josh Green (30th), Remi Royer (31st), Chris Hajt (32nd), Jeff Paul (42nd), Francois Methot (54th), Poti, Boyd Kane (72nd), Josef Boumedienne (91st), Trent Whitfield (100th), Bradley, Alexei Tezikov (115th), Brian Willsie (146th), Joel Kwiatkowski (194th), Andrej Podkonicky (196th) and Ivan Ciernik (216th).
Full Draft Results Here
