NHL Draft Lottery: Edmonton Oilers Win; New York Islanders Stay at #4

The Edmonton Oilers won the NHL's 2012 Draft Lottery tonight, meaning they get the first overall pick in the 2012 draft. That fortune did not alter the New York Islanders, who hang on to the 4th overall pick. Poor Columbus, which has had a nightmare of a season, continues its misfortune by losing the first pick to the Oilers, who will have that pick for the the third year in a row.

The last team to have three first-overall picks in a row was the Quebec Nordiques, which nurtured and packaged (or in Eric Lindros' case, isolated and packaged) for parts and then promptly won a Stanley Cup with them for the city of Denver.

For reference and draft dreaming, NHL's Central Scouting lists the top five North American-based skaters as:

1 Nail Yakupov, RW, Sarnia
2 Ryan Murray, D, Everett
3 Mikhail Grigorenko, C, Quebec
4 Alex Galchenyuk, C, Sarnia
5 Morgan Rielly, D, Moose Jaw

...and from their European list, you'd also consider center Filip Forsberg of Leksand in the mix. Forsberg was 4th overall in ISS's March rankings, and Bob McKenzie's polling of scouts has him at #4 too.

If the Islanders cannot get one of those "Russian" (Galchenyuk is actually a Milwaukee native) forwards and are not partial to Forsberg, one could easily imagine them trading down a la 2008 to collect extra picks as many defensemen round out the top 10 consideration.

No doubt, this will be just the first 12th of many, many draft debates we have here leading up to late June, and no doubt you have very, very strong opinions about that kid you read that one thing about that one time with the highlight video thing. Carry on.