PITTSBURGH _ The card inside that envelope was about to change everything for one team and alter the futures of the other 29 represented in an uncomfortable ballroom.
It was Friday afternoon and the clock was ticking toward 4:30 at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers in Manhattan. Jim Rutherford was unusually sweaty. Brian Burke was irrationally confident. Ken Sawyer kept an even keel.
All three winced while watching NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman slowly open the first 27 envelopes. Any minute now, they would find out if their team was the lucky one that landed the No. 1 pick and the right to draft Sidney Crosby, the most hyped hockey prospect since Eric Lindros, maybe even Mario Lemieux.
The third pick in 2005 went to Rutherford's Carolina Hurricanes. And then there were two. Burke and Sawyer, representing the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim and the Penguins, respectively, were called up onto the stage for the big reveal.
TSN's James Duthie, emceeing the made-for-TV event with Crosby beaming in via satellite from the family sofa in Nova Scotia, said, "Ladies and gentlemen, we're about to learn who has the Number 1 pick in the draft _ right after this break."
A landmark moment in hockey history had to wait for a few commercials.
Burke leaned over to Duthie and muttered, "I could kill you right now."
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the hotel, Craig Patrick was laughing his butt off.
