2010s Retrospective: The Golden Ticket

The most important moment of the decade for the Oilers came on April 18, 2015.

The team came into the 2014-15 season with some optimism as general manager Craig MacTavish made a couple of free-agent splashes, bringing defenceman Mark Fayne and Benoit Pouliot aboard to add veteran depth to the roster.

Despite the additions, it was more of the same. The Oilers kicked off the season with a five-game losing streak in which they averaged five goals against per game. They would go on a four-game winning streak to seemingly rejuvenate their season, but it was all given back when the team went on another four-game losing streak immediately after.

The real dagger came in November when the Oilers put together an 11-game losing streak that would put an end to the Dallas Eakins era. We didn’t get much out of the Eakins era, but we did get this brilliant clip of him getting angry at Taylor Hall for getting water on his sleek-looking suit.

Actually, to be fair to Eakins, he did actually play a pivotal role for the franchise, though it wasn’t in the way anybody envisioned he would when he was hired. The Oilers would go on to finish the season with a  24-44-14 record, good for third-last in the league ahead of the Arizona Coyotes and Buffalo Sabres who were engaged in an epic tank battle.

The Sabres and Coyotes, of course, were losing games like mad so that they could net themselves the best prospect to come along since Sidney Crosby. Connor McDavid, who became the third player to be granted exceptional status in the OHL as a 15-year-old, had been ripping up Junior hockey for three years. In his draft year, he posted 120 points in 47 regular-season games, 49 points in 20 playoff games, and 11 points in the World Juniors.

But this year’s lottery was different. Thanks to the Oilers of the early 2010s and their back-to-back-to-back first-overall picks, you couldn’t just be bad and get the top draft selection. You needed to be lucky too.

In 2012-13, the league made a change that gave every non-playoff team a chance at winning the draft lottery. Before that, only a few teams at the very bottom could win and move up to first pick, but this change allowed anybody not in the playoffs to select first overall. In 2014-15, the odds were changed so that the spread of those non-playoff teams was more equal than before.

The dead-last Sabres had a 20 percent chance of winning, the Coyotes had a 13.5 percent chance, and the Oilers had an 11.5 percent chance, while everybody else in the field had at least a one percent chance to win the lottery.

Despite their best efforts, the Sabres simply couldn’t beat the masters. Nobody is as good at winning draft lotteries as the Oilers are. Bill Daly drew card by card with each team remaining in their original spots. He finally made it to the third pick, where the Oilers sat, and he drew the Golden Ticket. The Oilers would jump from third to first, winning the Connor McDavid sweepstakes.

Meanwhile, in Buffalo…