NHL Stat Pack: In Praise of Leon Draisaitl

Edmonton Oilers forward Leon Draisaitl is a scoring machine in the 2023 NHL playoffs, writes Carol Schram. How does he compare to the playoff record-setters?

Monday night, Leon Draisaitl was held pointless for the first time in the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs. 

The Vegas Golden Knights dished out a 5-1 defeat to the Edmonton Oilers to take a 2-1 lead in their second-round playoff series and also kept the Edmonton power play off the board for the first time in the post-season.

Given the way he has been performing over the last three weeks, Draisaitl was entitled to a quiet night. He leads all players with 17 points — in just nine games. And he's already up to 13 goals, which has him in position to chase some records.

Draisaitl has a career regular-season shooting percentage of 18.1, which ties him with Alex Tanguay for the best accuracy among players with at least 100 goals since 2005. Brayden Point's also right there, at 18.0 percent.

In these playoffs, Draisaitl's accuracy has practically doubled from that already-high standard. His 13 goals have come on 37 shots, an incredible 35.1-percent success rate.

Maybe no goals on three shots on Monday was an overdue slice of regression to the mean?

Or maybe not. Draisaitl's sharpshooting isn't the best in these playoffs — or even this series. 

Vegas's Chandler Stephenson picked up his second goal of the series and sixth of the playoffs on Monday. He has put just 14 shots on net over eight games for the Golden Knights, a shooting percentage of 42.9. And though his sample size is smaller, Joe Pavelski of Dallas has five goals on 11 shots in four playoff games. That works out to 45.5 percent.

Pavelski, of course, matched Draisaitl with a four-goal night in Game 1 of the second round — in losing efforts for both the Stars and the Oilers. But while Pavelski was forced to miss five games of the Stars' first-round series against the Minnesota Wild while in concussion protocol, Draisaitl has been front and center all the way through for the Oilers so far.

He has goals in seven of Edmonton's nine games so far, including four multi-goal nights. And his 13 goals are nearly twice as many as the second-place player on the list, Mikko Rantanen of the Colorado Avalanche, who has already been eliminated.

His closest challengers who are still alive in the playoffs are Stephenson and Florida's Brandon Montour, with six each.

Can Draisaitl go for the all-time record?

That's 19 goals in a playoff year, shared by Reggie Leach of the Philadelphia Flyers (1976) and Jari Kurri of the Edmonton Oilers (1985). 

Draisaitl's 13 goals already have him in a tie for 41st all-time. And a new benchmark among active players is certainly within reach.

Sidney Crosby (2009) and Alex Ovechkin (2018) share that record, each with 15 goals in 24 games. Shoutout, also, to Mark Scheifele's 14 goals in 17 games in the Winnipeg Jets' run to the Western Conference final in 2018. 

As far as the most goals in a single series, Draisaitl has six in three games against Vegas. That record was also set by Kurri in 1985, with 12 goals in six games against the Chicago Blackhawks in the Campbell Conference final.

But as much as Draisaitl's rate of production in these playoffs has been out of this world, we really shouldn't be that surprised. His real coming-out party was in the 2017 playoffs when he logged six goals and 16 points in 13 games as the upstart Oilers pushed the Anaheim Ducks to Game 7 in Round 2. 

In the five seasons since, he has hit 50 goals three times. His 31 goals in 56 games in the 2020-21 year would pro-rate to 45 over a full 82 games, but he picked up his scoring pace by the end of the season. And his 'down' year of 43 goals came when he won the Art Ross Trophy in 2019-20, with 110 points. That season was also shortened, and his total pro-rates to 49.66 over a full 82 games.

Think about that for a second. If not for the pandemic, it's very possible that Draisaitl could have just logged his fifth-straight 50-goal season at age 27. That would have tied him for fourth all-time with Marcel Dionne, Phil Esposito and Brett Hull. He could even have had a real crack at challenging Mike Bossy's seemingly untouchable record of nine straight 50-goal years.

Here's another number that might surprise you. Looking at the most prolific goal-scorers over the past five regular seasons, Draisaitl ranks fourth, with 256 goals. But the differential among those top four is minuscule. 

Alex Ovechkin leads the list with 264 goals, Auston Matthews is second at 259 and Connor McDavid sits third at 257. David Pastrnak, a scoring machine himself, sits a relatively distant fifth at 242, and then there's a significant drop-off to sixth-place Nathan MacKinnon at 209.

The series between Edmonton and Vegas has been a bit of a see-saw battle so far — and the Golden Knights got great goaltending on Monday from backup Adin Hill, who was perfect after stepping in to relieve the injured Laurent Brossoit. 

Goalie injuries are nothing new to that group, who used five different stoppers in the regular season. And don't forget, they've got two-time Stanley Cup winner Jonathan Quick waiting in the wings if needed.

So far in this post-season, Draisaitl has played well and had some good fortune. Could he have even more to give as the series intensifies?

Quite possibly. 

Edmonton played 16 playoff games last year, and 23 of Draisaitl's 32 points came in the nine games of the last two series. Dealing with a high ankle sprain suffered late in the first round, he was held off the scoresheet twice. But the other seven games were all multi-point efforts, six of which were three points or more. And he had four assists in the Oilers' final contest when they went down to the Colorado Avalanche 6-5 in overtime in Game 4 of the Western Conference final. 

Draisaitl has already been incredible this spring. His habit is to get better as the playoffs go along, even under challenging circumstances.

Buckle up.