EDMONTON — True to his post-season word, Oilers general manager Craig MacTavish suddenly is “a whole lot smarter,” after Edmonton won the NHL lottery on Saturday and with it the right to claim Erie Otters superstar centre Connor McDavid first overall at the June 26 draft.
More important, the team MacTavish has been managing through a seemingly endless rebuild just got put on a fast track, all things being equal, now that they can add a player deemed to be a transformational one, in the mould of superstars Sidney Crosby and Jonathan Toews.
Watching the lottery unfold on his iPad in Lucerne, Switzerland, though, a sweaty-palmed MacTavish was intensely nervous as NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly opened the sealed envelopes, one for each of the 14 non-playoff teams eligible, until he got to Edmonton and said, after a brief pause, “We have a winner.