If TikTok were around in 1980 and you stumbled on an Edmonton Oilers highlight of Blair MacDonald scoring off a feed from the Great One, no doubt one sarcastic jerk would call him a “Wayne Gretzky merchant.”

Luckily, TikTok wasn’t around back then. Perish the thought of what kids will say about players 40 years from now.

But there is some truth to it in MacDonald’s case. He was the first NHLer who reaped the benefits of playing with Gretzky, and many more would follow.

He scored 46 goals and 94 points in the Oilers’ inaugural NHL season in 1979-80, his highest point total of his career in either the World Hockey Association or the NHL. MacDonald was an Oiler for five seasons in the WHA, another one-and-a-half years with Edmonton in the NHL.

His name is in Oilers lore for multiple reasons.

Notable

MacDonald had a choice to make coming out of junior in 1973. He was a sixth-round draft choice of the Los Angeles Kings, and a third-round pick of the soon-to-be-renamed Alberta Oilers.

He’d just scored 63 goals in 64 games with the Cornwall Royals, and the upstart WHA was gaining a reputation for big money contracts.

So he went that route to play in Edmonton, where he played for three seasons before going to the Indianapolis Racers. In 1977-78, he found himself back with the Oilers, as the team was starting to round into form.

The reason........

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