Is the dark horse candidate the obvious choice for Edmonton Oilers GM?
He’s a former number one overall pick in the National Hockey League draft. He put in place the solid foundation of the Tampa Bay Lightning Stanley Cup teams. He started out as a sports agent after he retired in 1993, then saw his company bought out by Octagon Athlete Representation in 1998. He represented such players as Mike Modano and Sergei Fedorov and built Octagon’s client list into the second largest for NHL players, before becoming Tampa’s GM in 2008.
Just now, he’s a dark horse candidate to become general manager of the Edmonton Oilers, but he also might be the obvious choice. Brian Lawton, 59, has a broad base of experience in hockey, enough that he meets the criteria of Edmonton hockey boss Jeff Jackson of bringing in an experienced NHL hand to manage the team.
For years now Lawton has been regularly interviewed on Oilers Now, where he’s demonstrated a huge amount of hockey knowledge in regards to contract negotiation, the salary cap, player relations, team construction, and analytics. From his time as an agent he’ll have an acute understanding of what players are looking for in a team, an aspect of management now mission critical.
In fact it’s this aspect of Lawton’s resume that has me thinking he’s right for the job. Job one of the new GM of the Edmonton Oilers is to get in sync with Jackson and Edmonton’s two star players, Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid. Jackson has stressed there will be no new deal with Draisaitl until a new GM is in place and Draisaitl can be certain he’s on the same page with that team leader.
I’ve always been impressed with Lawton’s intelligence and his tact as he’s commented on and critiqued the Oilers over the years. One thing is clear is his belief in building a team from the defence out, which is why one his key moves in Tampa was to select Viktor Hedman over slick forwards like Matt Duchene, Evander Kane or Brayden Schenn in the 2009 draft.
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I can’t say I’ve heard his name mentioned much in Edmonton for the GM job. More commonly we’ve heard names like Mark Hunter, Stan Bowman, Jason Botterill, and Keith Gretzky.
The Edmonton Journal’s Jim Matheson has been putting out Gretzky’s name, for example.
“If Washington Capitals can kick Brian MacLellan upstairs to be president of hockey ops with his assistant GM Chris Patrick taking over, there’s no reason why Keith Gretzky can’t do the same with Oilers after running their farm team and having long scouting chops… Again, I think Keith Gretzky can be Oilers’ GM going forward. He’s very smart, he’s put the work in, he runs the farm team. There’s such thing as rewarding and trusting people from within an organization with an advancement. Carolina did it with Eric Tulsky.”
Perhaps Matheson is right and Keith Gretzky is the best choice. I don’t know. I’m not here to tell you that one candidate is better than any other. I don’t know enough about each candidate to credibly offer up that kind of opinion. But I can say that what I’ve seen and heard of Lawton, I have liked plenty well. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him get the big job.
