Brooks Laich Recalls When Tom Wilson First Came Into The League & How He Became One Of NHL's Top 100 Players: 'A Wrecking Ball'

Brooks Laich remembers when Tom Wilson first arrived on the NHL scene.

The Washington Capitals were facing off against the New York Rangers in the conference quarterfinals of the 2013 Stanley Cup Playoffs, and wanted to pack a punch. So they'd called up Wilson, 18 at the time, from the AHL's Hershey Bears following the end of his junior career with the OHL's Plymouth Whalers.

"I remember, he was thrust into playoffs and made an immediate impact," Laich recalled. "(I thought) 'This guy is going to be here for a long time.'"

While Wilson didn't score through the first three games, he had eight hits and showed promise on the forecheck and grit on the fourth line, doing what he could to make his presence felt.

For Laich and the Capitals, the potential was there, and they knew they had a star in the making.

"You could see his youth physically, but on the ice,he was already making a big impact. You're like, once this young boy becomes a man, it's going to be a wrecking ball," Laich recalled. "You could just see his potential in every aspect of his game. You could see it with his physicality, you could see it with his hands, with his shot, with his skating."

Wilson would stick around and play his rookie year in 2013-14, where he worked to make the team out of camp and burst onto the scene with 151 penalty minutes and 197 hits through 82 games, along with 14 fights.

"The first couple of years, he punched his way through the league. He was just a force, he made a statement: 'This is who I am. I'm here,'" Laich said. "He was a presence and feared.

For Wilson, it was what he had to do to earn his way onto the roster and become a regular.

"(They told me if I did that), it's going to be very hard for them to send you home,'" Wilson said of . "That was the mentality, that I was going to do whatever it took."