I think it's a combination of both, he was certainly at the right place at the right time. But he had to be smart and ruthless to survive the instability of the Bonnanos in the 70s/80s and the current wars. Not only that, he's pretty much made the Montreal crew his own family of its own (they don't even kick up to NY anymore do they?). Perhaps him and his pop being Sicilian gave them an edge, they tend to deal more in international rackets and drug traffic than American LCN want to get mixed up in.

But he was lucky in the fact that he got involved in the New York family that was biggest into drugs in the 1970s and happened to be in the city that was the main gateway for the drugs. And he was lucky that the Bonnanos were weak enough that he have a lot a freedom to do what he wanted to in Montreal.