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Old 10-08-2016, 08:25 AM   #166
devo22
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Originally Posted by JerryUnderscore View Post
This thread is the first time I've heard that the Oilers scouts wanted Murray. Katz really stepped in? Do we have a source for that?
we do.

Quote:
At the Friday morning meeting of the scouts and front office personnel, then general manager Steve Tambellini would tell the scouts who the team would be choosing later that night.

But that morning proceeded strangely. Head amateur scout Stu MacGregor would ask the scouts to vote, and then he would leave the room. He’d come back with some alternate criteria to describe the type of player the Oilers wanted to choose, and they’d vote again.

Every time, the vote came back the same. Nine votes for defenceman Ryan Murray, and two for Nail Yakupov. Truth be told, one of those Yakupov votes had started as a vote for Alex Galchenyuk, then morphed into support for Yakupov.

With the advice of their on-the-ground scouts tucked away, the Oilers brain trust of the day — Tambellini, president of hockey operations Kevin Lowe, soon-to-be GM Craig MacTavish, and owner Daryl Katz — would meet that afternoon to finalize the decision.

The scouts were, to a man, surprised when that Friday morning meeting ended, and Tambellini did not stand up to declare who the 2012 No. 1 overall draft pick would be. All they knew was that Murray was the overwhelming favourite. One of the Oilers Ontario scouts is believed to have had Yakupov outside his Top 5. The other had him second on the Sarnia Sting — behind his junior teammate Galchenyuk. A European scout was Yakupov’s biggest champion among the scouts.

That evening, dressed in a flat grey suit with a blue striped tie, Tambellini recited the line that every recent GM has come to know so well: “The Edmonton Oilers are so proud to select, from the Sarnia Sting, Nail Yakupov.”

Nine to two.
http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/o...yakupov-start/
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