The NHL has a history of making decisions that are controversial, confusing and, on occasion, downright comical.

Sure, the league occasionally makes an outstanding call, like replacing its all-star game with the Four Nations tournament earlier this year. (Hard to believe that a genuine competition infused with emotion and elements of nationalism would be more compelling than a contact-free exhibition of goaltender abuse, isn’t it?)

Alas, the NHL has come up with a perfect counterweight to organizing the Four Nations: Staging a decentralized draft in June.

The event will be held in Los Angeles, but the site is of virtually no consequence because, while the top 50 prospects are expected to be there, the decision-makers from the league’s 32 teams won’t be.

Rather, general managers, scouts and the rest of each club’s personnel staff will convene in their home city and make their picks remotely.

Using this format is a first for the NHL and, ideally, will also be the last.

Among other things, having executives from every team (and others in the industry, such as player agents) gather in a central location not only generates attention – a lot of media outlets will be reluctant to send people to California when the executives from the team they cover won’t be there – but makes it easier for GMs to make trades.

Or, at least, to lay the foundation for future ones.

Obviously, player exchanges can be discussed over the phone, but face-to-face conversations are more likely to be fruitful. In the past, it hasn’t been unusual for one GM to meander from his place on the draft floor to the table of another club to chat with a colleague there.

It’s unlikely that most of those talks have been about the best place to grab a post-draft beverage.

This time, if, say, Florida GM Bill Zito wants to have an in-person discussion with Vancouver’s Patrik Allvin, he’d better book a flight well in advance.

Will any of this do irreparable damage to the NHL? Not really.

But was it an unforced error by a league that can’t seem to get out if its own way at times? Without a doubt.

And it is something the NHL would be wise to abandon after this summer, in part because hockey’s Next Big Thing is scheduled to arrive in about a year.

Although Gavin McKenna won’t be available in the 2025 draft, he’s probably generated more excitement and interest than any of the young players who are.

Which is no slight to any of the prospects who will be selected in Los Angeles.

Rather, it’s evidence of just how promising McKenna, a forward with Medicine Hat in the Western Hockey League, is.

And why, barring something cataclysmic, he will be the first player chosen in 2026.

The latest bit of data to explain why: McKenna had a goal and an assist in the Tigers’ 5-2 victory over Lethbridge in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference final Friday night, extending his scoring streak to 50 games.

That ties the longest such run in the Canadian Hockey League, which encompasses the Ontario, Quebec and Western leagues, since 2000.

The only other CHL player to reach that mark, which includes playoff games and the Memorial Cup tournament, in this century was Quebec Remparts winger Alexander Radulov in 2005-06.

McKenna will try to take sole possession of the top spot Saturday night, when the Tigers and Hurricanes meet in Game 2.

To put his feat in perspective, consider that the longest streak Sidney Crosby put up during his major-junior career with Rimouski in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League was 37 games, which ties for the sixth-longest in the CHL during the past quarter-century.

Coincidentally enough, the draft in which Penguins secured Crosby was conducted in an Ottawa hotel, with a venue switch from the Corel Centre necessitated by the lockout that scuttled the 2004-05 NHL season.

Back then, having a non-traditional draft setting was the unfortunate by-product of a labor dispute. In 2025, it’s the result of another perplexing decision by the NHL hierarchy.