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As we count down these last eight games of the 2024-25 regular season – the 50th season of Capitals hockey – and as the Alex Ovechkin chase of Wayne Gretzky’s goal mark ascends to its crescendo, we’re going to share a personal memory of these last 20 years with the Gr8 Eight every game day until season’s end.

Today, it’s Draft Day, June 26, 2004 in Raleigh, NC, where the Caps quite coincidentally play tonight.

For the Capitals, the 2003-04 season went off the rails early. By the time they strung together their first pair of consecutive victories on Nov. 29-Dec. 2, 2003, they had already traded away team captain Steve Konowalchuk, and their record of 8-15-1-1, only a point ahead of Pittsburgh for the worst in the League. Coach Bruce Cassidy was fired days later, replaced with Glen Hanlon. But the trades continued right up to the trade deadline as the District bade farewell to stalwarts such as Michael Nylander, Robert Lang, Mike Grier, Jaromir Jagr, Sergei Gonchar, and – most painful of all – Peter Bondra.

For a team that had made the playoffs most seasons for the prior two decades, it was humbling. But when word quietly reached the Caps on April 6 that they’d won the draft lottery for the 2004 NHL Entry Draft, the cloud cover lifted.

Drafting first overall at the ’04 Draft in Raleigh, the Caps went big. Even though they were a rock-bottom franchise in the League, and even though virtually everyone knew a crippling work stoppage/lockout was on the horizon, they decided to celebrate their good fortune by setting up a party room and hosting the drafted players and their families as well as any Caps fans who made the trip south.

On June 26, 2004 in Raleigh, the Caps surprised no one when they made Alexander Ovechkin – the "Ovi" handle was still more than a year away – the first overall choice in the 2004 NHL Entry Draft. No one knew it at the time, but the Caps’ fortunes were on the verge of taking a significant upward turn that would span the next two decades.

Soon after hearing his name called on the draft floor and pulling that Caps sweater over his head for the first time, Ovechkin was shaking hands with incredulous Caps fans while inhaling copious amounts of cantaloupe. As soon as a fresh plate of the orange melon was put out, Ovechkin devoured it.

As I recall, nachos weren’t on the menu, but the color of the two delicious treats are vaguely similar.

Ovechkin’s English was still in its nascent stages in those days; he could speak and understand the language, but in-depth conversations weren’t possible, and his agents supplied him with a translator for lengthier interviews. But it didn’t even matter. His ebullient personality transcended language and made him the life of the party that day. Anyone with any experience around shy and reticent teenage athletes was stunned by this gregarious Russian outlier.

“I remember him coming into our meeting room,” says Caps president Brian MacLellan, “going around and shaking everybody’s hand. He didn’t really have a great grasp of the language, but he was just all in. He came around, shook everybody’s hand, and he engaged the way he engages. There was no doubt that he was going to turn out, and that he was the guy that everybody wanted to pick. He just took over rooms with his energy. He lives life at a high energy level, and I think that attracts the scouts; it attracts everybody. It attracts the fans, attracts ownership, and it’s worked out.”

Right away, Ovechkin came across as a man of the people, a lively, outgoing, larger than life figure with an appetite for existing out loud. He didn’t shy away from people or fans, he was always smiling and laughing – and will all his teeth in those days – and his passion for the game of hockey and his drive to be the best at his craft was already evident, even though it would be more than 15 months before those same fans would finally see him suit up and make his NHL debut in DC.

It felt like a significant introduction to the DC sporting world at the time, and looking back on it now, even more so. The beginning of something grand, something lasting.

“We thought we would have an event to introduce Ovi and the other guys who were drafted that year,” remembers Dick Patrick, chairman of the Capitals. “But Ovi was obviously the centerpiece, and it was a party. It was just fun, because we were all excited after having a really painful season. It’s not fun to trade away guys that have done so much for your team, but that’s the first step in starting over again, getting that first pick in the draft. So we decided to celebrate it and have fun.”

And as we all know now, Ovi loves to have fun. He met the fans and met the moment, and anyone who was there that day carries fond memories of those initial impressions of The Great Eight from when he was still a teenager who had yet to step on an NHL ice surface, let alone score a goal in the League.

“If I play in Washington, I’ll give this team my heart. I just want to play in the NHL,” he said on that day nearly 21 years – more than half his life – ago.

Whether it started with that losing season of 2003-04, or winning the ’04 draft lottery, or draft day in June of that year, or the night he launched his pursuit of Wayne Gretzky by becoming the first player chosen first overall to score two goals in his NHL debut on Oct. 5, 2005, it’s been a wild and incredible ride for Ovechkin the Capitals and hockey fans everywhere, and it occupies a significant chunk of the franchise’s half century history.

Here's how we concluded the story on Ovechkin being drafted by the Caps in this space more than two decades ago:

A lot has been written about Ovechkin during the past years and months, but as an 18-year-old who has yet to embark upon what he hopes will be a long and prosperous NHL career, he will write the story himself on the surfaces of the 30 NHL arenas in the years and decades to come.

That he has, and that, he continues to do.