So, what now for Oilers without McDavid?

Not weeks, said general manager Peter Chiarelli. Months.

That’s how long Connor McDavid will be out of the Edmonton Oilers’ lineup.

If it weren’t for bad luck, the Oilers would have no luck at all. ( Ahem.) OK, who’s kidding whom?

They’ve been lucky as hell with all the No. 1 picks in the National Hockey League Entry Draft they’ve had: three in a row, four in the last six years.

Right up to the point where those picks actually stepped on the ice, that is. There, the luck has stopped.

Taylor Hall’s hell-bentforleather style has caused the top pick of 2010 to suffer injury after injury.

The Oilers have played 77 games without him in the lineup in his five- plus seasons.

Ryan Nugent- Hopkins, No. 1 in 2011, missed 20 games in his rookie season and needed shoulder surgery immediately after his second.

Nail Yakupov, Mr. 2012, almost immediately displayed wonderful shooting and skating skills and very minimal hockey sense. ( That probably isn’t so much luck as an indictment of the owner thinking he knew better than the scouts.)

Even their first- round pick of 2008, Jordan Eberle, has missed time with ankle, knee and now shoulder problems. He hasn’t played yet this season. And now this. McDavid, arguably the best prospect to come into the NHL in a generation, already a true show- stopper at 18 who was making everyone around him into a better player and the Oilers into a competitive outfit, broke his collarbone crashing into the end boards Tuesday night.

This is no Well- Tempered Clavicle ( sorry, J. S. Bach). It’s a bad one. “We’re talking months,” Chiarelli told reporters Wednesday, “Plural, months.”

For once, the Oilers got it unequivocally right in the draft, though to be fair, an alien being from Neptune could hardly have got the pick wrong.

There is no one to blame for McDavid’s injury. Bubble wrap might have softened the impact of his toppling and ramming head- and- shoulder first into the boards, but he was making a power move to the net off the left wing, and Philly defencemen Michael Del Zotto and Brandon Manning simply cut him off at the pass.

“He lost an edge,” said Chiarelli.

“You can watch it 100 times, there's nothing dirty about it,” said Oilers coach Todd McLellan.

Indeed, Manning hovered solicitously over McDavid after the two slid into the boards, knowing something bad had happened.

And something bad has. Bad for the NHL, bad for fans in every city his injury will prevent McDavid, who was named the league's rookie of the month only Monday, from visiting.

But most of all, bad for a burgeoning superstar of the humble variety, and for the Oilers, who have been showing signs under McLellan of figuring out how to play a professional style of hockey.

McDavid had already made a new man of Yakupov, turning his game ( and maybe his career) around, and like many a great centreman before him, was becoming one of those players who sprinkles magic dust on anyone lucky enough to play on his wings.

Wayne Gretzky was like that. Mario Lemieux was. Henrik Sedin is. Joe Thornton.

Though McDavid is still an NHL infant, just 13 games and 12 points into a season that was bringing back those kinds of memories, a lot of progress is now on hold.

In Edmonton, where it remains ( for good reason) heretical to mention anyone's name in the same breath as that of The Great One, McDavid is out indefinitely with the kind of serious injury Gretzky never had to endure until Team USA defenceman Gary Suter cross- checked him during the 1991 Canada Cup, causing back problems that would recur for the rest of his career.

If the Oilers are cautious with McDavid, and of course they will err on that side, there is no reason to think this will be the kind of injury that would hurt his future.

But if McDavid's break is severe enough to require plates and screws, and that's how it sounds, his recovery will be longer than, say, Patrick Kane's. The Chicago winger broke the same collarbone, and missed seven weeks. The Oilers won't be that lucky. So, what now? Well, it was always going to be difficult for them to make the playoffs. They're more than a long shot now. Even if 20- yearold Leon Draisaitl leaves a very productive spot on Nugent- Hopkins' wing to take over McDavid's centre spot, two lines will be less than they were.

“But you talk about how a team can rally around it, and that's what I expect to happen here,” Chiarelli said. “These are tough injuries. The silver lining is that he's young, he's a strong kid mentally and physically. He's still developing so he will come back even stronger.”

They hope. We all hope.