At last year’s NHL draft combine, Leon Draisaitl was unequivocal. “I need another year of junior,” he said. Nothing about playing his way onto a roster in training camp, nothing about landing in a situation that would be a good fit, nothing about a summer of training raising his game. Plain and simple, he believed that he wasn’t ready to make the giant step up.
Draisaitl brings a lot to the table but more than anything else he sees and thinks the game well. He has a high hockey IQ. Usually this pertains to the micro and the spontaneous: reading plays in a split second and making the right decision. In Kelowna’s thumping of Rimouski Monday night, you saw something along those lines every shift. He was the best player on the ice, pretty much a man among boys, one move ahead of anyone who tried to defend him. He scored two goals and they stood in sharp contrast: On one he carried the puck straight at a defenceman, went wide on the right wing, beat him on the turn and then roofed a shot high on the short side; on the other he skated into the slot without the puck, anticipating a pass, and then snapped a one-timer that gave the netminder no chance. He showed he can make a chance and finish a chance. All to the good.
But watching him against Rimouski, you could see that Draisaitl’s hockey IQ extends to the macro: He had a sense of his game that the Edmonton Oilers didn’t have. Not that he skated into the Oilers camp as an unknown quantity. The Edmonton scouting staff had to do a pretty extensive work-up in his draft year in Prince Albert before they selected him third overall last June. And when he was interviewed by Edmonton and any other team that invited him to come in for a chat at the combine he told them the same thing: Not next year. He told them he felt that he was still learning the North American game. It would not have been a pat answer, a script given to him by his agent. He doesn’t seem like that sort. He’s old beyond his years and, what you’d say about precious few teenagers, so serious that he might pass for severe.
Still, the Oilers thought that they knew better, judging him ready to play in the NHL last fall. Sure, Craig MacTavish and the rest of management might have felt they were under pressure to show that they came away with value for yet another high draft pick. Especially when the development of Nail Yakupov went sideways, when Ryan Nugent-Hopkins was something significantly less than 99 redux, when Darnell Nurse was off for another year in the Soo. MacTavish et al might have worried that some people would question what they considered an out-of-the-box pick: A German kid? No. 3? All these, however, were extenuating circumstances and none of them a good reason to keep Draisaitl around.
Draisaitl knew better than management and thus, finally, long overdue, management became ex-management. MacTavish doesn’t get a seat at the table when Peter Chiarelli is introduced as the new GM. Before the arrival of Connor McDavid, a change of culture and, maybe more, a breaking of bad habits in Edmonton is desperately needed. If everyone had a do-over, would the Oilers have been wiser to not rush Nugent-Hopkins and Yakupov into the NHL lineup, maybe buy another year of time to assess their worth before having to tender their second contracts? Put it this way: It couldn’t have worked worse than what they did.
It looks like Nurse benefited from his extra seasons in the Soo and given Draisaitl’s expressed preference for patience, it might not be the worst thing in the world if Draisaitl came into the league at 21.
Then again, if Chiarelli is going to explore his options, it might turn out that Draisaitl is the most easily moveable prime asset he has. Though the Memorial Cup has a very low interest to scouts and executives, they were out in force last night and I suspect it wasn’t necessarily Draisaitl’s fellow Rocket Nick Merkley they were watching. (That said, Merkley also scored two goals, smoked the Oceanic’s Christopher Clapperton with a vicious and probably unethical check behind the play and all in all did a pretty decent Brendan Gallagher impression.) Draisaitl would be a piece that Chiarelli could move for some veteran talent that the Oilers’ talented kiddie corps needs in support. Last night was a good night for Draisaitl and the Oilers even if he isn’t ever going to be an Oiler, even if he isn’t in the NHL next year.
Kelowna’s game against Oshawa should be a real test. These are clearly the two best teams in this tournament. If Draisaitl rises to the stiffest test on his return to the CHL, he might show the Oilers or GMs elsewhere that he’s learned all he can at this level and might be ready for the next. More importantly, he might come around to that way of thinking himself.