There are goal scorers, and there are assist men. Players like Guy Lafleur, who will always be remembered for charging down that right side, and guys like Joe Thornton, who consistently hits you on the tape like a surgeon. Or a magician.
For every Wayne Gretzky, a legendary scorer but in the eyes of most an even better dish man, there was a Jari Kurri to pull the trigger. For every Brett Hull an Adam Oates, for every Alex Ovechkin a Nicklas Backstrom.
But what of Leon Draisaitl, who on Sunday became only the 24th player in NHL history to record the second 50-goal, 100-point of his career?
What is Draisaitl, we ask on the heels of a decisive 6-1 win at Anaheim, Edmonton’s fourth straight ‘W’?
Is he a better passer? Or a better scorer?
“I don’t know if you can really… I don't know,” began Oilers goalie Mike Smith, who was simply steady on a night when being spectacular was simply not a requirement. “I’ve never seen a player pass the puck like he does. His vision on the ice is incredible, and he can pass it both on his forehand and backhand. But he’s got an incredible shot too.
“That goal he scored tonight, there aren’t too many guys who can score from that angle and on an NHL goaltender.”
Like a mix between Mike Gartner and Dave Andreychuk, Draisaitl scores from distance but protects a puck and is super strong on his skates around the net. He leased his goal-scoring office from Mike Bossy, while his backhand wizardry makes Oilers fans forget about Doug Weight, who learned to stickhandle with a ping pong ball on the linoleum kitchen as a kid.
Those ample skills have made Draisaitl one of the NHL’s Top 3 points leaders since becoming a full-time NHLer in 2015-16.
When Draisaitl joined the Oilers out of junior, the No. 3 overall pick in the 2014 draft, he was a centre. But when he arrived, both Connor McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins were entrenched at centre. Then-GM Peter Chiarelli had moved both Phil Kessel and Tyler Seguin to the wing when he worked in Boston, and was prepared to experiment with Draisaitl.
“Maybe Leon is not as suited for the wing as (Kessel and Seguin) were, but he does some things that are suited for the wing better than they do. He protects the puck, and he can make plays in small spaces,” assessed Chiarelli at a 2015 Rookie Tournament in Penticton. “It may be we find out Leon is a better winger than he is a center. Is that fair to him? It was fair to Kessel. It was fair to Seguin.
“Those guys were shooters,” Chiarelli added. “Leon, he’s got a good shot but I don’t think he’s a shooter. He makes good plays on a regular basis.”
Even then we weren’t sure what he was. Three years later, Darnell Nurse seemed pretty sure he had it figured out.
“He has this ability to analyze the game in his own head, and make those little plays that you guys can see from up in the press box,” Nurse said one day in 2018. “You could kind of see it when he was younger, that he had the ability to make those plays. Now, each and every night he’s making a jaw-dropping pass.”
Draisaitl scores with the best goal scorer in the game today, Auston Matthews, trailing the Leafs star 124 goals to 139 over the past three seasons. But he outproduces Matthews every year (295 to 234 over that span), plus kills penalties. He is his team’s most relied upon faceoff man.
Sorry Leafs fans, but he is a better, more all-around player than Matthews, as the latest two-time 50-goal, 100-point player. Connor McDavid had a goal and two assists to pad his NHL scoring lead at 105 points, while Draisaitl stayed right behind him at 101, the National Hockey League’s only two 100-point players as we enter the season’s final month.
“I’m proud,” said Draisaitl of the milestone. “I’m very happy about it, no question. But it also shows you how great my teammates are right? You know, they’re the ones that put me in these situations are the ones that get me the puck in the right moments.”
Who had Brett Kulak in the pool for serving up goal No. 50, a lovely cross-ice feed from Kulak’s spot on the left point. It was a patented one-timer for No. 50, lethally injected behind goalie John Gibson from the edge of the right circle. It came nearly four minutes after he had assisted on Kulak’s first goal as an Oiler, on a night where the Stony Plain product went plus-5, while partner Tyson Barrie (goal, two assists) was plus-4.
But this night was about the big German, who has firmly crushed the narrative that he is somehow just a fortunate planet orbiting around McDavid. There are only four 50-100 men in Oilers history: Glenn Anderson (once), Draisaitl (twice), Jari Kurri (four times) and of course, The Great One did it eight times.
All but one of those players has won a Stanley Cup. That’s where Draisaitl’s head is, even on a night of historic personal achievement.
“You know, we’re all getting older,” said Draisaitl, 26, whose Oilers are 10-2-1 in their past 13 games. “We’re all getting to a point where we all want the same thing. This group has been through a lot of negative things, but you know, it seems like we’re trending in the right direction.”
