Why Nic Dowd is on this page

Nicholas Dowd (born 27 May 1990, Huntsville, Alabama) is an American professional ice hockey forward who plays for the Washington Capitals of the National Hockey League and is one of only three players in NHL history to come out of the state of Alabama. The Los Angeles Kings selected him 198th overall in the 2009 NHL entry draft, and he has been a fixture on the Capitals’ fourth line and penalty-killing unit since 2018.

Dowd grew up in Huntsville playing junior hockey, then moved to Wenatchee, Washington for the Wenatchee Wild and on to the Indiana Ice before joining the St. Cloud State Huskies in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference. In his senior year (2013–14) he was named to the inaugural All-NCHC First Team, the AHCA West First-Team All-American, and was a Hobey Baker Award finalist; he finished his college career with 121 points in 155 games. He signed an entry-level contract with the Kings in April 2014, made his NHL debut on 22 March 2016, and won a Calder Cup with the Manchester Monarchs in 2015. After short stints with the Kings and Vancouver Canucks, he signed as a free agent with the Washington Capitals on 1 July 2018; he has re-signed with Washington four times since, most recently in April 2025 on a two-year, $6 million extension.

Dowd’s parents, Alan and Liz Dowd, are British-born, which sets his heritage path apart from most of the directory: the Dowd line through Huntsville traces, in the documented record, through Britain rather than directly across the Atlantic. The deeper Irish provenance behind the surname is not confirmed in any public source we have located, and we mark it honestly here rather than invent. The Dowd variant of the wider O’Dubhda surname is most populously held among the Irish-American and Irish-British diasporas, and a British-Irish Dowd line is unsurprising in itself; if a relative reading this can place the family further back, please get in touch, and the Y-DNA project may help interested male-line Dowds situate themselves.

Dowd married Paige Kraemer, whom he met at St. Cloud State, in August 2017. He is one of a small number of Southern-American professional players whose careers have helped expand interest in the sport in non-traditional U.S. hockey markets — a counterpart, in his own way, to the more populous Irish-Canadian and Irish-American traditions out of which most NHL Dowds have emerged.

Notable work

• 2009 NHL entry draft, 198th overall, Los Angeles Kings
• St. Cloud State Huskies, NCHC inaugural All-Conference First Team (2013–14)
• Hobey Baker Award finalist (2014)
• Calder Cup champion, Manchester Monarchs (2015)
• NHL debut, 22 March 2016 (Los Angeles Kings)
• NHL career across Los Angeles Kings, Vancouver Canucks, Washington Capitals (2016–present)
• Joined Washington Capitals as free agent (1 July 2018)
• Two-year, $6 million contract extension with Capitals (April 2025)

Heritage notes

Family root: Huntsville, Alabama (British-born Dowd parents Alan and Liz — earlier Irish line not documented in public sources).

The directory threads Nic Dowd back to the O'Dubhda clan story via the surname-variants reality — the same family carried these spellings as it scattered. See the septs and the diaspora for the wider pattern, or the Clan DNA Project for the genetic connections being mapped now.