FOXBOROUGH – When Caleb Lomu boarded his flight to Boston Thursday morning, he knew he was in for a friendly dose of embarrassment.

His uncle, Curtis Tanner, is an American Airlines pilot. Tanner texted Lomu’s mother a day or two before asking what flight the Patriots first-round pick had booked for his introductory press conference at Gillette Stadium.

It happened to be the same red-eye flight that Tanner had been switched to.

“He’s the type of uncle to where he’s going to embarrass you a little bit,” Lomu said. “I knew it was coming, so my family told me to film it.”

“I got on the plane and I was kind of waiting, and then of course he got on the intercom and started talking. I thought he was just going to be talking about me, but he brought me up to the front. Proud uncle, is what he was saying.”

Getting a ride to the airport from a family member is one thing. Having an uncle fly you from Massachusetts for the beginning of a lifelong NFL dream is another.

But, that’s just how Lomu’s luck worked out on this sunny Thursday. He began the day in Arizona and found himself shaking hands with Robert Kraft in Foxborough a few hours later.

“How great is that karma?” Kraft asked.

Lomu’s wife, Kitty, predicted the Patriots would be the team to draft him.

She printed out a US map with the locations of all 32 NFL franchises ahead of the NFL draft.

“We just hung that up, put it on the wall, and then everyone in the family could just get a little sticky note and put their guesses of where I was going to go,” Lomu said. “It’s a funny story, actually, my wife actually chose New England.”

“She was the only one who put her name on the Patriots, so that was a sign right there where I was going to go,” he added. “I’m LDS and when you get your mission call, you do the same thing, you have the whole map and you choose where you think the person is going to go. So, it’s kind of the same thought process behind that.”

Kitty was the first one to recognize the Massachusetts number when Lomu got the call from the Patriots on draft night.

The Patriots traded up to pick Lomu, a 6-foot-6, 304-pound offensive tackle, with the 28th overall pick in the first-round of last month’s NFL Draft. He primarily played left tackle at Utah, but has experience on both sides of the line.

“I just think of myself as a tackle in general, left or right side, just happened to play left in college and that’s where I got comfortable playing two out of those three years at Utah. My first year there, I was kind of a swing tackle so now I feel comfortable at left but have also been working at right these last couple of months. I feel just as good on the right side as well, so either tackle position I’m happy to play.”

The Patriots took left-tackle Will Campbell in the first round last year. Campbell had an up-and-down year featuring a strong start and a difficult finish after he came back from an MCL sprain that sidelined him for a few weeks.

Morgan Moses started every single game for the Patriots at right-tackle last season. He turned 35 in March, and the Patriots will want to get younger at that position eventually.

Lomu played with another first-round tackle, Browns rookie Specncer Fano, at Utah and the Utes kept Lomu on the left side.

The Patriots could use depth at both tackle spots, and the Patriots have praised Lomu for his versatility. He has the size, athleticism, and upside to play anywhere on the line, Patriots executive vice resident of player personnel Eliot Wolf said the night New England made the pick.

Protecting Drake Maye continues to be a priority for the Patriots, and it remains to be seen exactly where Lomu fits into that plan.

Two weeks after the draft, Lomu is in Massachusetts and ready to get to work. The time just flew by, he said.

“As soon as I got that call, the whole surreal feeling of draft night and all that, it didn’t really sink in until the next morning when I woke up and really processed it” Lomu said. “That whole night was kind of a blur. Had all the excitement and emotions of that night and then woke up the next morning and it really settled in that I was a Patriot.

“It hit me all at once. From that moment to now, it’s all been excitement. I’m just ready to get here, finally be here, and meet all the great people, coaches, and players.”

Khari A. Thompson

Sports Reporter

Khari Thompson covers professional sports for Boston.com. Before joining the team in 2022, Khari covered college football for The Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Miss.

But you know what? I actually kind of love it.

I spent hours there on Tuesday afternoon, taking the place in from various angles, watching how locals and tourists are using the space. And they were actually using it.

Good job, everybody!

Maybe everywhere was bound to feel like heaven on one of the first, long-overdue warm, cloudless days of the year. Maybe anything would look great after the ripped-up square the city endured for more than two years.

But on Tuesday afternoon, the new park felt dynamic, magnetic, and interesting.

You can watch the whole world pass by on the path that cuts through the park, from the corner of Boylston and Clarendon at one end, to the corner of Dartmouth and Huntington at the other: gaggles of workers strolling by with their lunches, and haunted-looking businessy types rushing to something important; kids cackling in groups or shrinking into themselves; tourists taking in the glorious architecture in every direction — Trinity and Old South churches, the Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel and glass Hancock tower, the grand Boston Public Library. There were old women inching along with grocery bags and kids hurtling ahead of their parents like little pinballs. Some people carried expensive little designer bags, and others heaved along all they had.

The parade is better than Newbury Street, and you don’t have to camp at a cafe with an eight-dollar matcha to enjoy it.

There is now far more seating from which to people-watch, especially if your bits are creakier than they were in your glory days: The renovation has tripled the sitting spots in the park. There are wooden benches under the budding trees by St. James Street, and benches built into a raised structure along Dartmouth, the platform built to protect the roots of trees that had struggled before with people trampling them.

The square has 30 more trees than it did, bringing the total to 83, all of them desperately needed in a warming city. In the summer, you’ll be able to sit at cafe tables and chairs beneath the growing canopy. It might not look promising right now if you’re not a gardener, but the whole place will be super lush once all of the new plantings grow in. The city has also added new raised beds filled with native species to buffer the place from the busy streets around it.

And in case any of you water-table nerds are curious, the designers say that, because of the new planting beds and paving materials, the reconfigured plaza will actually absorb more rainwater than before. The center of the park has been reinforced to take the weight of trucks, the weekly farmers market, and the crowds from big events like the Boston Marathon.

People parked themselves all over the place on Tuesday afternoon — on the benches beneath the most mature trees, and in the full sun along the built-in stone and wooden benches on the other side. There is less grass than there used to be — the lawn space has been halved, to about 10,000 square feet — but there was still plenty of lolling going on, with folks laid out in the sun, reading or napping. Later in the afternoon, a few kids squealing raced around on the grass, one of them dragging along a kite in the stiff wind. Expect more lying about once the renovation of the beloved fountain by Boylston Street is complete: It will be safer and better lit, and the sound of running water is excellent for snoozing, or so I’ve heard.

“You have folks sitting around in their own little spaces, it’s just beautiful,” said Charles Robinson, who lives in elder housing in the South End, and was sitting in the sun by the raised grove. “I drift out here to just sit. It’s wide and it feels free. It’s comfortable, you can see how it flows.”

People came and sat a while then moved on, all living our moments together. A woman sat under a tree and called to accept a job offer after a protracted interview process, negotiating her hours. Two nursing school graduates stopped to take pictures in their caps and gowns and an older, retired nurse approached to give her advice after 47 years in the job: “Don’t be afraid to change your mind!” A couple dozen kids from The Learning Project, a nearby elementary school, set up a maypole in the park and practiced a complicated fractal weave, as a teacher tried to both direct them while playing the saxophone. It was mystifying and delightful.

“There is so much more room now,” said Amy Allard, who lives in Ridgewood NJ but comes to Boston often because she and her husband love it. “This is so crisp and clean.”

I can understand how people would resist crisp and clean. It seems like nobody leaves anything alone any more: everything gets renovated and spiffed up, the rough edges sanded off. And ordinary people get pushed further and further out. Boston is far ritzier and more polished and exclusive than it was when I first came here over 30 years ago.

But this is going to be a really successful, accessible public space — a democratic place where we can be together, in the sun and in the shade, where we can gather for farmers markets and public performances and protests and five minutes of respite in a place where everybody has a right to be.

It reminds me of the Rose Kennedy Greenway, another Boston gem, built on the land freed up by the Big Dig. Everybody (except yours truly, for the record!) ragged on that place at first, decreeing it a soulless disaster. Now it’s one of the city’s most vital arteries, with art and food trucks and beer and grass and gorgeous spots to gather ourselves.

Like the Greenway, Copley Square Park is the kind of space cities desperately need — a flexible, open place that can accommodate all kinds of people.

It’ll grow on us. Maybe, after a while, we won’t even miss all that lawn.

Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham can be reached at yvonne.abraham@globe.com.

The Bruins made the requisite progress in Year One of the Great Retool. But they are still a giant step or two away from being an actual Stanley Cup contender.

That was the general gist of 45-minute rehash and look ahead from CEO Charlie Jacobs, team president Cam Neely and GM Don Sweeney on Wednesday at the Garden.

Simply put, they are not good enough now to compete with the top teams in the league who are still playing hockey. Their performance against the Buffalo Sabres in the first round made that obvious.

“We need more talent. We need more speed,” said Neely. “That’s something we have to try to acquire in one way, shape of form. But you look at the elite teams in the league and we’re not there.”

That part of the job will fall upon Sweeney.

The team accomplished much of what management it reasonably could, give the turnover from last season’s trade deadline. The B’s were a tougher out and, in the regular season at least, they made the Garden an unpleasant place to play for most teams. And they had a 100-point season, which exceeded most, if not all predictions, on their way to a playoff berth.

But all season, they allowed more high danger chances and leaned too heavily on excellent goaltending. And in the playoffs, the thinness of the talent showed up. Sweeney talked about needing to make more in-game adjustments now that the foundation of coach Marco Sturm’s hybrid man/zone system has been implemented. More talent would help him to do that.

“(Cutting down chances against) is definitely an area that we have to continue to get better at. It has been a staple of our organization and we had a big change and hopefully our players continue to adapt to it,” said Sweeney, who said the team played to its desired standards at times but not consistently enough.

The talent level is tied to the X’s and O’s.

“That’s part of the process for us to continue to deepen our roster, to add some speed to our roster so that when Marco wants to flip a switch and change the system, he feels more comfortable to do that,” said Sweeney.

One thing they need to find, and Neely laid out on the table, is a number one center. They thought it was going to be Elias Lindholm when they signed him to a seven-year, $54.25 million contract two summers ago. But he has not been able to be that guy.

“We all in this room recognize we don’t have a true number one C. That’s something we want to try to rectify, whether it’s this offseason or those guys (Fraser Minten or James Hagens) growing into it. But it’s something we know is needed,” said Neely.

Sweeney certainly sounded like he was leaning toward developing one in-house, whether it’s Minten or perhaps down the road Hagens. True number one centers, guys who excel at both ends of the ice like a Patrice Bergeron or Anze Kopitar or Sasha Barkov, don’t often change teams.

“When you do make a call about a player of that nature, the guy on the other side says, ‘There’s not even 32 of them in the league,’ ” said Sweeney. “We feel pretty good about this year that, by committee, our guys did a pretty good job. And Fraser spent some time up in that spot, which is not an easy spot to play in. You’re seeing a hell of lot harder matchups, you’re playing with a star player and you’re trying to navigate (your own game).”

It sounded again like the approach with Hagens is to allow him to get his feet under him at wing and then try him at center. How long that takes will be up to him.

“I think it’s fool’s gold to try and accelerate somebody in their natural progression,” said Sweeney.

As for Lindholm, he’s been hindered by a back injury for his two seasons with the Bruins. What is the concern level there?

“Elias talked about what his summer is going to look like and how he’s going to attack that, so right away he’s aware that he would like to train a little differently and adapt to what he needs to do to be healthy enough to make the impact he wants to make,” said Sweeney. “He even referenced that the Olympics, albeit it’s a dream, he might have been able to use that time a little more effectively in terms of recovery and rest … injuries are not a player’s fault. It’s a matter of what you can do in training to counteract that. And he’s willing to put that work in.”

Some other topics of note:

*Sweeney lauded Mason Lohrei’s improvement this season but believes he can increase the urgency in his defensive game.

“There’s a stubbornness there because he’s able to execute some of the skill plays that I wasn’t and you applaud that,” said Sweeney. “Now can he play with the same conviction that you’d want every one of our players, the way (Jonathan Aspirot) would play, and close? That’s the balancing act. Mason’s got a lot of upside.”

*Though not definitive, it sounds like the B’s will be naming a captain. They had pretty much a two-headed captain this season with David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy with Hampus Lindholm wearing the third A.

“Obviously we’d love to name a captain. But we’ve had some great captains here so one of the things we want to do is make sure we’re picking the right guy. Marco’s going to be a big part of that,” said Neely, adding the group has already had discussions about it.

*With two extra first-round picks over the next three years, Sweeney said he’d willing to make an offer sheet to an RFA but was doubtful that the time was right for it this year with the cap going up to $104 million from $95.5 million, giving teams more flexibility to match.

“(St. Louis GM Doug Armstrong) described it very well. If his mom was running another team, he’d still do it. And I think we all have to look at it that way. We’re friendly but we’re not brotherly in terms of how we operate as general managers,” said Sweeney. “You have to execute when it presents. I just think it will be a little more difficult with the cap going up and the space most teams have.”

*Sweeney was non-committal when the subject of UFAs-to-be Viktor Arvidsson and Andrew Peeke came up.

“We’ll explore whether we can bring either or both back,” he said.

*The B’s will be well represented at the World Championships. Hagens, Lohrei and Sean Kuraly will be going for Team USA, Joonas Korpisalo and Henri Jokiharju for Finland and Minten for Canada.

*Sweeney said no Bruin will require offseason surgery.