Edmonton Oilers: Can Leon Draisaitl two-peat as the NHL’s points leader?
Can Connor McDavid’s mastery land his Edmonton Oilers teammate a second-straight season as the NHL’s points leader?
Edmonton Oilers‘ forward Leon Draisaitl should feel rather cheated by the 2019-20 NHL season.
Now to be fair, so should pretty much every hockey player, as it may go down as the strangest season in league history – assuming 2020-21 doesn’t make this season look ridiculous -, but Draisaitl specifically should take particular umbrage with a 71 game regular season because he was in the middle of an absolute tear.
Through said 71 games of action, all of which Draisaitl appeared in, the Oilers’ 25-year-old alternate captain scored 43 goals and 67 assists for an even 110 points. Those numbers rank fourth, first, and first in the NHL, making Draisaitl arguably the most valuable player in the entire league last season – assuming, of course, you chalk up his -7 +/- to sheer on-ice volume (22:37 ATOI).
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So, you may wonder, why should a player who led the league in assists and points somehow feel cheated? Well, because Draisaitl was on pace for an even bigger season had he been given a full 82 game slate to work with.
How big are we talking? Well, assuming we take the clip Draisaitl was working at, divide it by 71, and then multiply it by 82, and you get an otherworldly 50 goals and 77 assists for 127 points.
Granted, those aren’t exactly generational numbers, but they’re good enough to easily pad his lead and establish the young center as arguably the best second-liner in the NHL.
Sidebar: I know it’s basically common knowledge that Wayne Gretzky is the best hockey player of all time, but have you reminisced on just how dominant his career stats are from the 1980s? My goodness, the all-time goals, assists, and points lists are basically a ‘Wayne Gretzky Yearbook’.
But there’s one question that burns in the minds of NHL fans; both Edmonton Oilers aligned and otherwise: Can Leon Draisaitl do it again?
Now, in theory, that idea isn’t all too hard to imagine. Draisaitl did crack 100 points in the full 2018-19 season and actually scored the same number of goals (50) as he was projected to score in 2019-20 had the season gone off without a hitch. With that being said, only one player – ironically enough, Draisaitl’s teammate Connor McDavid – has led the league in points two seasons in a row since 2002. Could Draisaitl be the rare player to accomplish the feat and make the Oilers the only team in the league with two such players on their active roster?
It’s certainly a possibility.
With the Oilers returning arguably the best second-line in the NHL in Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and Kailer Yamamoto set to take on warry defenses tired from battling McDavid, Edmonton has put their alternate captain in a pretty fantastic position to rack up points early and often. Draisaitl is also a fixture of the Oilers’ power play, having recorded 281.4 PP minutes while racking up 40 percent of his points in such situations.
Assuming McDavid continues to be arguably the best offensive weapon in the game – which, at 23-years-old is a borderline guarantee – Draisaitl will remain a 1b getting the type of second-looks superstars like Sidney Crosby can only dream of both on the second-line or in the rare third-period situations when the two 100-plus point scorers attack the goal together.
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For as long as Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid remain paired together on the Edmonton Oilers – and by paired, I mean purposely split up over the top-6 – the duo will remain near the top of the NHL’s points leaders indefinitely – it’s basically a guarantee. Assuming the Oilers opt to run a similar rotation in 2020-21 and the season isn’t too short and/or weird, Draisaitl has to be considered at least a strong contender to join McDavid in the NHL points leader two-peat club; a club featuring everyone from Jaromir Jagr and Mario Lemieux to Wayne Gretsky for eight-straight years from 1979-87 and again from 1989-91. See what I mean by the ‘Wayne Gresky Yearbook’?