Caps Alumni Biographies: Ron Low

Ron Low holds many unforgiving records for the Capitals. The club's first goaltender and first player selected in the 1974 expansion draft still sits atop the team's leaderboard in losses and goals against for a season, with 36 and 235 respectively. Low split time between the pipes with Michel Belhummer during the Capitals inaugural season - and racked up all eight victories for the team that season.

He did not fair much better in his second season with the team as he racked up 31 losses and 208 goals against. Teammate Ron Lalonde recollected about the goaltender's tough task: "Ronnie faced so many shots but he never gave up," Lalonde remembered. "If we were losing 6-1, he wasn't going to give up that seventh goal and he practiced that way too."
But despite the effort, general manager Max McNab sent Low to Detroit just before the start of the 1977-78 season for center Walt McKechnie - who was coming off two stellar seasons - and a pair of draft picks. A few weeks later, Gary Smith was signed to share the team's goaltending duties with Bernie Wolfe.
Low spent ten more years in the NHL, suiting up for the Detroit Red Wings, Quebec Nordiques, New Jersey Devils and Edmonton Oilers - the team that gave Low his first head coaching job. After four years as the Oilers head coach and two years as the head coach of the New York Rangers, Low was hired as a goaltending coach and pro scout for the Ottawa Senators this past July.