As Edmonton’s championship window narrows, Leon Draisaitl’s blunt warning signals a franchise at a crossroads. The Oilers must fix their regression before a frustrated Connor McDavid forces their hand.
Leon Draisaitl said the Edmonton Oilers have two years, and while he's right, technically, he's also being generous.
If Edmonton stumbles through another season like this one, one of mediocrity and first-round exits and locker room honesty that comes too late to matter, Connor McDavid doesn't have to wait for his contract to expire to make life very uncomfortable for this organization.
He can demand out, and the Oilers, holding the most coveted asset in the league and having failed to build the team he needs, would have very little moral authority to say no.
So when Draisaitl says two years, what he probably means, even if he won't say it that plainly, is one year to get this pointed in the right direction before the whole thing starts to unravel in a way that can't be walked back.
"Yes, I am concerned about that," said Draisaitl on where his team is going. "We're not trending in the right direction. We've taken big steps backwards. We've got to get a grip of this and head back in the right direction."
Draisaitl has spent a decade in Edmonton. He signed a long-term deal to be here, bought into the vision, watched two Stanley Cup Finals come and go without a ring to show for it, and now he's sitting across from a microphone saying the organization has taken big steps backwards.
And it's not exactly like he's blowing off steam after a tough loss. That's a player who has been watching something erode and finally saying it out loud.
"In what world do you have the best player in the world on your team, and you're not looking to win?" added Draisaitl. "I mean, I know we're looking to win, but we have to be better.
"There's no way around it: we have to improve. (McDavid) is signed for two more years, and God knows where that goes. But as of right now, we have two years. We have to get significantly better."
"You take it for granted sometimes, how hard it is to be a great team, how hard it is just to get in the playoffs," began McDavid. "How hard it is to win in the playoffs. How you need to put everything into it. This year, everybody took it, maybe just a little bit, for granted. Like it would just happen. But things don't just happen."
That's the whole season in a sentence. The Oilers waited for the talent to take over, for the switch to flip, for April to bail them out the way it had before. But it didn't happen that way, and now they're having an offseason conversation about whether the most important player in franchise history—a loaded statement given the players to hail from this franchise—will still want to be here when the next contract comes around.
"The best team that we've had, in 2024, everybody played such a major role in it," said Draisaitl. "The McLeods, the Foegeles, Desharnais, Ceci. They all played such a massive role in all of it. You need those guys to go deep."
Those guys are gone. Replaced, in theory, by other players that never quite fit the same way, never brought the same hunger, and never made the Oilers feel like a complete team rather than a star-driven one, hoping the stars align. Draisaitl watched it happen and apparently filed every bit of it away.
"At the end of the day, Connor, Bouch, maybe myself, when the game's on the line, we have to make a difference," continued Draisaitl. "Day to day, we have to set the tone and lead in the right way. Come up with big goals and big moments, yes. But it's not a three- or four-man team."
The Oilers have one year to show McDavid they understand that. Another promise about the direction of the franchise won't do it. The only thing that does it is building a roster that actually looks like it belongs in the same conversation as the teams still playing in May.
It's two years, but only one year, really.
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