They racked up murders No. 27 and 28 in the two days I just spent in Edmonton. And while everybody is rather shocked by this anomaly, hockey fans are more concerned with the No. 1, as in top NHL Entry Draft choice Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.
The Red Deer Rebels phenom was plucked by the Oilers Friday night in Minnesota, where Vernon was represented by several scouts. If you managed to stay awake for the full four hours of coverage, you would have at least caught Ernie Gare of the Rangers and George Fargher of the Senators on TSN.
Edmonton head coach Tom Renney voiced his preference when he spoke at last Friday’s Vernon Special Olympics banquet. He wanted Nugent-Hopkins, or RNH, as the Edmonton Journal was calling him in their Saturday paper.
“I’ve seen him play live once and watched a lot of video of him,” said Renney. “He’s a very, very good player. It’s a big decision for us, a defenceman or a centreman? We’re in dire need of both of them, of course but we’ve going to leave that up to Stu (chief scout McGregor) and his crew who know exactly what they’re doing and what we need.”
Picking RNH was easy. Hockey Canada chief scout Kevin Prendergast said Nugent-Hopkins was a cut above every other kid in the amateur lottery. Says RNH plays much like Wayne Gretzky.
At the Special O dinner, Renney compared stars like Taylor Hall and Nugent-Hopkins to the higher scoring Z or Q letters in Scrabble, letters which ignite a team and give you winning scores. The role players are the vowels and Edmonton appears primed for a triple-word score.
The Oilers, who finished in the NHL basement, grabbed the d-man they needed at pick No. 19, selecting Oscar Klefbom, who is already playing in the Swedish Elite League.
With the first pick of round two Saturday morning, the Oilers grabbed d-man David Musil of the Vancouver Giants, whose father and former NHLer, Frank, scouts for the Oilers.
So, with three more bricks added to the rebuild, the Oilers appear ready to make a run at the playoffs and go from there. Renney says McGregor, who was in the Okanagan lots last winter, either scouting the BCHL or watching his nephew, Devin Pimm, play for the Vernon Senior Atom Rep Wolfpack, has a solid handle on the bird-dog program in an era where good scouting systems are a must.
“It’s everything, especially at the National Hockey League level, with the big team and even the farm team for example, everything is so contingent on the CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) salary cap so it’s incumbent on teams to draft well and develop within,” said Renney.
“So, to give yourself the best starting point you possibly can, you have to draft well. And our guys have done. Stu has done an outstanding job. I go back to Kamloops with Stu so there’s a nice relationship there.
“Bob Brown, one of our scouts, same thing. It’s got kind of an interesting karma to it. So, maybe we can duplicate our Memorial Cup win of ‘92 with a Stanley Cup victory.”
Renney, a Cranbrook native who was a phys-ed major at the University of North Dakota, says the Oilers’ rebuild takes “guts and courage” and he credits McGregor with being an astute judge of talent.
McGregor played minor hockey and eventually coached from Bantam through Midget AAA with the Edmonton South Side Athletic Club, then scouted for Kamloops, where his buddy from United Cycle – Ken Hitchock – coached.
Eventually he became assistant GM and director of player personnel in Kamloops in 1991, and was promoted to GM in 1995 when Renney and Don Hay were coaches. The Blazers won Memorial Cups in ‘92, ‘94 and ‘95.
Les Jackson and Craig Button hired McGregor to scout for Dallas, where he won a Stanley Cup, then Kevin Lowe brought him home to Edmonton (although he remained living in Kamloops where he was married) when the Edmonton Investors Group took over.
MacGregor became head scout in 2007 and his record has been excellent, after years of abysmal drafting by the Oilers.
Renney, meawhile, is stoked about coaching such a young and ultra-talented bunch.
He remembers his days of coaching Junior B Columbia Valley Rockies in Invermere with fondness, hardly knowing he’d one day end up in the show.
“I’m one of those guys that is very methodical in my approach to coaching and recognized that you needed to win in order to kind of advance yourself.
“And in order to win, you needed to be prepared and organized and educate yourself. You just try to get better everyday. So, I was pretty committed to the process of where I wanted to go, which was, at that time, to coach Team Canada. That was my ultimate goal and then what’s happened beyond that, is the NHL experience and now it’s all about the Stanley Cup.”
