With the first pick of the NHL draft, the Panthers went with 15 seconds of dramatic pause before announcing Aaron Ekblad's name.

The silence felt much longer for Ekblad.

"I was just sitting there just kind of scared and excited at the same time," he said.

At last, general manager Dale Tallon made the call for Ekblad, selecting the defenseman with the first pick Friday night.

The NHL is moving toward altering its draft lottery to help avoid teams earning the top overall pick on a repeated basis.

The league's GMs, meeting Wednesday during their annual Stanley Cup convocation, also discussed further enhancing use of video replay to examine issues like whether pucks sent over the glass were tipped, whether pucks hit the mesh above the glass and came back into play and whether plays involving goals were off-side. 

But the key issue was the draft lottery system in the wake of the Oilers securing the No. 1 pick in three straight years, from 2010 to 2012.