MacKinnon: Oilers’ modest progress.

Only trades Oilers GM swung were for draft picks

Fortune favours the bold, the saying goes, but sometimes when bold swaggers into the competitive chaos on the NHL entry draft floor, reality takes over, as Craig MacTavish learned on Sunday.

The freshly minted general manager has pledged to Edmonton Oilers’ season-ticket holders to try to make bold moves to improve his team, which is loaded with highend skill but thin at goaltender, light on grit and role players. Several bricks shy of a load, in other words.

By most measures, MacTavish’s moves on Sunday did not qualify as bold, not even close. But that’s not all bad.

The line between bold and reckless or misguided can be a fuzzy one. Was Vancouver Canucks GM Mike Gillis being bold when he traded goalie Cory Schneider to New Jersey for the ninth overall pick, which he used to select twoway centre Bo Horvat from the London Knights. Or was he a man desperate to create salarycap space by trading whichever goalie he could move. In short, was he being a desperate man?

Was Calgary Flames GM Jay Feaster displaying his brilliance when he drafted Quebec Major Junior Hockey League forward Emile Poirier with the 22nd overall pick instead of hometown hero Hunter Shinkaruk, who stars for the Medicine Hat Tigers? Or was he stubbornly, short-sightedly sticking to his plan?

Hockey history, and the ubiquitous hockey analytics zealots, will judge that, no doubt.

As for MacTavish, he made modest progress toward his stated goals of acquiring significant “meat” for his talented but unimposing lineup. He used the seventh overall pick to secure defenceman Darnell (Good Night) Nurse, a banger with a strong athletic pedigree — his father, Richard, having played for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats; his uncle, Donovan McNabb, a longtime NFL quarterback.

Nurse’s mother, Cathy, played basketball for McMaster University and his sisters, Tamika and Kia, take after their mother.

The Oilers selected nine other players in Rounds 2 through 7 of the 211-player talent mart, names that now can be filed away for future reference, say three to five years from now.

Apart from snaring Nurse, who is not expected to be on duty in Edmonton for a season or two, MacTavish’s most significant achievement is more subtle, borrowing as it does from a precept of medical ethics to “first, do no harm.”

So, MacTavish, though pitching vigorously, did not swing a deal with Vancouver for Schneider. The asking price was said to include the No. 7 pick, a second-round pick and a prospect. Too steep.

Despite much theatrical dialogue with Paul Holmgren, his Philadelphia counterpart, no trade was made for the Flyers’ big, shutdown defenceman Braydon Coburn.

Any Oilers fan who was hungry for “meat” in the form of Chicago’s rambunctious-butskilled Bryan Bickell, was no doubt crestfallen to see the winger translate his playoff performance into a lucrative, four-year extension with the Blackhawks club he so obviously loves.

“You generally default to no deal versus a bad deal,” MacTavish told reporters in New Jersey.

Which is bang on. But MacTavish replaced a GM (Steve Tambellini) perceived as insufficiently aggressive in making trades. He pledged to make bold moves, not find witty words to justify being prudent.

So, watching MacTavish repeatedly huddle with Holmgren, then seeing him trade the 37th overall pick, not as part of a Coburn package but in a swap of picks with the Los Angeles Kings, sure felt like an anticlimax.

The same held true for a later swap of picks with the St. Louis Blues.

Something else. In both cases where he traded picks, MacTavish traded away from a chance to draft a highly regarded goalie. At pick No. 37, the Edmonton Oil Kings’ young goaltender Tristan Jarry would have been available, for example. The Pittsburgh Penguins chose Jarry at No. 44.

At No. 57, Edmonton could have taken Eric Comrie, but again the Oilers traded that draft pick. Comrie went to Winnipeg at No. 59.

So MacTavish balked at paying too stiff a price for Schneider, and fair enough. But he then passed on Jarry and Comrie? Curious decisions for an organization whose goalie pipeline is ill-stocked.

And yet on a day when few actual trades were made, MacTavish was not out of place as the new kid on the managerial block.

“My deal rate per spoken word is extremely low right now,” said MacTavish, whose tongue is as silvery as his hair.

At least he had the good grace to be self-deprecating. MacTavish knows he is not yet walking the talk he delivered when he was named the club’s GM back in April.

He also knows that on Friday, the NHL free-agency period commences, another recruitment avenue to explore. He knows that trade discussions begun on the draft floor could be concluded weeks or months from now.

Fortune may still favour the bold, but in the NHL, bold does not come easily or quickly.