There are 21 players at the Caps rookie camp in Annapolis this weekend, and 17 of them are Washington draft choices from the last five NHL Drafts. Among those 17 drafted players, 18-year-old defenseman Brian McFadden is the youngest. McFadden turns 19 on Jan. 2, just after the flip of the calendar to 2027.<\/p>\n
Fewer than 10 players from the 2026 NHL Draft were chosen out of high school, but McFadden \u2013 who skated for Thayer Academy in Braintree, Mass. last season \u2013 is one of them, and he is the first player the Caps have taken from the high school ranks since they chose center Brian Pinho in the sixth round of the 2013 NHL Draft.<\/p>\n
When the Caps called his name on June 25 of this year, McFadden was hundreds of miles east of Buffalo, where the Draft was being conducted.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll my family was at my grandparents\u2019 house in Gloucester [Mass.] and my aunt just screamed, and I figured that was about the time I went,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n
McFadden was not surprised to learn he\u2019d been chosen by the Caps; they were one of several teams who showed some pre-draft interest in the big blueliner.<\/p>\n
\u201cI talked to them a good amount leading up to the Draft,\u201d says McFadden of the Caps. \u201cBut a lot of teams just keep nagging at you, and it\u2019s a good thing and you\u2019re happy that it\u2019s all happening. But I liked the Caps and I felt like they had a liking for me, and it all worked out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soon after being drafted, McFadden attended Washington\u2019s summer development camp with the other three members of Washington\u2019s 2026 Draft class, and the team\u2019s Annapolis rookie camp is another steppingstone for him as he prepares for what\u2019s next, which is a season with the USHL\u2019s Chicago Steel. McFadden is also committed to Northeastern University, but he\u2019s taking it a season at a time in this nascent stage of his NHL career.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know the full route yet,\u201d says McFadden. \u201cBut yeah, I\u2019ll go to Chicago this year and then to Northeastern at some point and just keep getting better and keep improving every year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Longtime NHL forward Scott Gomez is the Steel\u2019s head coach, and former NHL defenseman Mike Mottau \u2013 who hails from Quincy, Mass., not far from McFadden\u2019s hometown of Holbrook, Mass. \u2013 is an assistant coach there, so McFadden\u2019s first coaches beyond high school have playing experience at the level McFadden is seeking to reach.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2019Patience\u2019 is a word we use around here a lot; just be very patient,\u201d says Caps assistant general manager and longtime draft guru Ross Mahoney. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing worse than rushing somebody and putting them in a position that they\u2019re not capable of being in at that time, so we\u2019ve always been very patient with them. And I think the bottom two picks [McFadden and center Logan Stuart] are going to go to school, and they\u2019ll probably spend how much time at school? That will probably depend on them and their development.\u201d<\/p>\n
At 6-foot-5 and 196 pounds, the right-handed McFadden is easy to spot on the ice, and watching him skate and defend, it\u2019s easy to see why Mahoney and the Caps liked McFadden enough to make him the first high school defenseman the Caps have drafted since 1994.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think sometimes it\u2019s hard with high school players,\u201d says Mahoney. \u201cBut we tell our scouts, \u2018We can\u2019t control the environment they\u2019re in.\u2019 So, my question to them is, \u2018How does he skate? How does he think the game? What\u2019s his work ethic like? Is he a good teammate?\u2019 Some are playing in the elite league like [2026 first-rounder Oliver Suvanto], some are playing in college, some are playing in junior, some are playing in high school. And I think sometimes high school kids don\u2019t get looked at as much as they should.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s probably a little more of a projection with him, because he was playing high school hockey and we had the opportunity to watch him play also in the Midget National Championship in Las Vegas. Our US scouts really like him a lot; they like the size, they like the reach, they like the skating.<\/p>\n
Growing up as a Bruins fan, McFadden lists Zdeno Chara, Charlie McAvoy and Brandon Carlo as defensemen he enjoyed watching as he grew up. This weekend in Annapolis, McFadden is sharing the ice with several players who have pro experience, including a couple \u2013 Cole Hutson and Ilya Protas \u2013 who finished last season in the NHL.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just all experience and understanding what you need to be better at, and work on our strengths,\u201d says McFadden. \u201cBut your weaknesses are what you have to keep going at, and you kind of just have to live in the gym and keep getting bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mahoney sees McFadden as a player that championship caliber teams need.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s kind of a typical 6-4 or 6-5 defenseman with the long reach that should and we hope will develop into more of a two-way guy, and probably heavier on the penalty kill side as opposed to the power play side of it,\u201d says Mahoney. \u201cHe\u2019s the type of defenseman that you win with. When you look at Stanley Cup champions, you\u2019ve always got your Cole Hutsons, so to speak, on your power play and one or two guys who can carry the puck out of your end at will and play on the power play.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut usually, those champions have three or four other players that are sort of like [McFadden], where they\u2019re taller, longer space eaters. They\u2019re strong, able to box people out and keep people from getting to the net and keeping everything to the outside. We think he\u2019ll develop into one of those types of players.\u201d<\/p>\n
McFadden is just getting started, and his development arc is likely among the longest of the 21 players here in Annapolis. That\u2019s not just because he hasn\u2019t played at the higher levels yet, but because he is among the youngest players currently in the Caps system.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I just played a winning brand of hockey,\u201d says McFadden of what attracted the Caps to him. \u201cAnd I\u2019m someone that you want on your team who is obviously not going to stand out by doing all the flashy stuff, but there\u2019s obviously guys for that, and the Caps have a good amount of those. But it\u2019s always good to have a bigger guy on the back end that will shut stuff down.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s always going to be true in the NHL, and those players are worth the wait, so we\u2019ll be keeping an eager and watchful eye on McFadden\u2019s progress this season and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are 21 players at the Caps rookie camp in Annapolis this weekend, and 17 of them are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":848130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-848129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=848129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}