Feelin' Drafty

With the Caps' draft position set and some folks already mockin' things up (thanks for the link, Kyle), we're starting to get in the mood as well. Couple that with the ridiculous amount of information over at Hockey-Reference.com and you've got all the makings for a stat dump.

So let's take a look at some tidbits from the Caps' draft history, by the numbers:

• Most Draft Picks, Single Year: 25 (1974)
• Fewest Draft Picks, Single Year: 5 (1979)
• Number of Career NHL Points Scored by the 25 1974 Draftees: 245 (led by Greg Joly's 97)
  
• Number of Career NHL Points Scored by the 5 1979 Draftees: 1481 (led by Mike Gartner's 1335)
  
• Fewest Career NHL Points-Per-Pick by a Draft Class: .77 (1986; 13 picks, 10 NHL points)
  
• Most Career NHL Games for a Draft Class: 4373 (1984; the Caps' first four picks - Kevin Hatcher, Stephen Leach, Michal Pivonka and Kris King - each played more than 700 NHL games)
• Fewest Career NHL Games for a pre-2003 Draft Class: 103 (1998; Jomar Cruz was the Caps' first pick... 'nuff said)
• Most Players to Play in the NHL of any Draft Class: 10 (1978; this class included Ryan Walter, Bengt Gustafsson and Lou Franceschetti)
• Fewest Players to Play in the NHL of any Pre-2003 Draft Class: 2 (1987 and 1997; Steve Maltais and Tyler Larter in the former, Nick Boynton and J.F. Fortin in the latter).
• Most NHL Points by a Draft Class: 2019 (1984, led by Hatcher's 677)
• Most Points-Per-NHL-Game-Played by a Draft Class: .86 (1979; 2006 is right behind at .84 thanks to Nicklas Backstrom's brilliant rookie year and 2004 is third)
  
• Most Goals by a Draft Class: 752 (1979, led by Gartner's 708)
• Most Goals-Per-NHL-Game-Played by a Draft Class: .44 (1979 again; 2004 is second even if you take Jeff Schultz out of the mix)
• Fewest Goals by a pre-2003 Draft Class: 4 (1998 and 1986; Krys Barch has all four for the former class and Jeff Greenlaw had three and John Purves the other for the latter)
• Best Plus/Minus by a Draft Class: 279 (1982; Scott Stevens finished his career with a plus-393 rating, but current Caps assistant coach Dean Evason was a minus-86 over his career to drag it down a bit)
  
• Worst Plus/Minus by a Draft Class: -381 (1974; Joly, taken first overall, had a career plus/minus of minus-163)
• Most Penalty Minutes by a Draft Class: 6,228 (1984; King had 2030 of 'em)
• Anything to do with Goalies: 1989, the year in which the Caps picked Olie Kolzig and Byron Dafoe with their first two picks. The pair have combined (should I remove "have"?) for 1126 games played and 472 wins.

OK, I'm almost spent. But before I go, here for no good reason at all is a list of all of the Caps' first round picks (draft year in parens), ranked by NHL games played:

1635 - Scott Stevens (1982)
1432 - Mike Gartner (1979)
1178 - Bob Carpenter (1981)
1157 - Kevin Hatcher (1984)
1003 - Ryan Walter (1978)
904 - Sergei Gonchar (1992)
899 - Robert Picard (1977)
845 - Rick Green (1976)
783 - Brendan Witt (1993)
711 - Olaf Kolzig (1989)
552 - Jason Allison (1993)
511 - Darren Veitch (1980)
437 - Nick Boynton (1997)
365 - Greg Joly (1974)
304 - Brian Sutherby (2000)
280 - Yvon Corriveau (1985)
268 - John Slaney (1990)
245 - Alex Ovechkin (2004)
212 - Steve Eminger (2002)
204 - Boyd Gordon (2002)
198 - Kris Beech (1999)
192 - Alexander Semin (2002)
174 - Mike Green (2004)
134 - Pat Peake (1991)
131 - Nolan Baumgartner (1994)
131 - Greg Carroll (1976)
113 - Jaroslav Svejkovsky (1996)
110 - Jeff Schultz (2004)
82 - Nicklas Backstrom (2006)
57 - Jeff Greenlaw (1986)
48 - Eric Fehr (2003)
47 - Tim Coulis (1978)
34 - Reggie Savage (1988)
17 - Trevor Halverson (1991)
3 - Alexandre Volchkov (1996)
2 - Brad Church (1995)
2 - Miika Elomo (1995)
1 - Alex Forsyth (1975)
0 - Karl Alzner (2007)
0 - Simeon Varlamov (2006)
0 - Sasha Pokulok (2005)
0 - Joe Finley (2005)
0 - Alexander Kharlamov (1994)