This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Leon Draisaitl

Fifty-five goals at 19.8 per cent, and the 17th-lowest ground covered of the 365 forwards the tracking follows.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2014-15	EDM	37	2	7	9	-17	4	1	0	1	49	4.1	12:42
2015-16	EDM	72	19	32	51	-2	20	5	0	2	133	14.3	18:04
2016-17	EDM	82	29	48	77	+7	20	10	0	5	172	16.9	18:53
2017-18	EDM	78	25	45	70	-7	30	6	3	1	194	12.9	19:19
2018-19	EDM	82	50	55	105	+2	52	16	3	5	231	21.6	22:35
2019-20	EDM	71	43	67	110	-7	18	16	0	10	218	19.7	22:37
2020-21	EDM	56	31	53	84	+29	22	15	1	8	168	18.4	22:11
2021-22	EDM	80	55	55	110	+17	40	24	1	11	278	19.8	22:21
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	558	254	362	616	+22	206	93	8	43	1443	17.6	20:17

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

55 goals and 55 assists in 80 games — 110 points, a plus-17 and 40 penalty minutes at 22:21 a night, the 100th percentile among forwards — the most ice time of any forward in the league.

50.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,325 minutes, the 55th percentile. His ice went 67-57 against an expectation of 60.69-60.17 — six more goals for than the chances promised and three fewer against.

Sixteen playoff games for 7 goals and 25 assists.

The Finesse Game

Fifty-five goals on 278 shots is 19.8 per cent, the 97th percentile among forwards. Twenty-four of them came on the power play. Fifty-one men scored thirty goals last season and only four converted at a higher rate, and that is the number that carried the season.

3:50 a night on the power play is the 98th percentile and 37 per cent of his points came there, the 94th — on a unit that produced 8.509 expected goals per 60, the best rate in the league.

2.90 even-strength points per 60 is the 92nd percentile, so the five-on-five production is real too. 9.33 shots per 60 is the 81st.

2.48 takeaways per 60 is the 94th percentile against 2.95 giveaways at the 96th. He holds the puck a very long time.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 209.

23.9 mph is the 7th-fastest top speed of the 365 forwards the tracking covers and 9.1 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 84th percentile — and 8.87 miles per 60 is the 17th-lowest.

That combination is the file. He is one of the fastest men in the league and one of the least mobile: almost nobody covers less ground per minute of ice, and when he does move he is quicker than nearly everybody. He picks his moments and stands still the rest of the time, and the tracking measures both halves of that.

1.78 hits per 60 is the 17th percentile and 0.84 blocks the 8th. There is no defensive contribution the box score can see.

The Intangibles

Third overall in 2014, and 558 NHL games at 26 with 616 points and a career plus-22.

His chance share at five-on-five is 50.2 per cent, the 55th percentile. A 110-point forward at the 55th percentile of chance share is a contradiction, and the with-and-without-you file explains it: with Kailer Yamamoto he took 45.0 per cent over 1,093 attempts and 54.1 without him. With Tyson Barrie 46.9 over 707. The second line was the problem and he was on it.

Jesse Puljujarvi away from him is at 58.8 per cent. Draisaitl away from Puljujarvi is at 47.0.

Fifty-five goals and a fifty-per-cent chance share is a strange pair of numbers to find on one page, and the resolution is not that the goals are false. It is that the power play is where he is unstoppable and even strength is where the club needs someone else on his wing.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
ordinaryraised, and called ordinary

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
16:34 a game at five-on-five, 99th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
edgespresent and ordinary· changes direction at speed; the forechecker commits and he is gone
“He picks his moments and stands still the rest of the time, and the tracking measures both halves of that.”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“He holds the puck a very long time.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,325 minutes

Expected goals: 50.2%; 58th pct
Shot attempts: 50.6%; 61st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 67 for, 57 against. Expected: 60.7 and 60.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

94th

Numbers

58th

The report ranks him 36 points above where the numbers do. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 74 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2021-22 · 80 games

Top speed: 23.9 mph; 99th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 3.39 a game
Distance: 3.31 miles a game
Hardest shot: 91.1 mph; 71st pct

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Usual linemates

2021-22 · 1325 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2021-22

The club: EDM took 51.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.2% — 1.1 below the club he did it on.
The role: Second line, 1,325 minutes at five-on-five — 91st percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Kailer Yamamoto	45.0%	54.1%	51.5%
Darnell Nurse	51.8%	48.9%	54.0%
Cody Ceci	48.7%	51.2%	53.2%

45.0% together, 54.1% for him apart and 51.5% for Yamamoto apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

385 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 56 of them goals. His median goal came from 18 feet. 43% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 10% from beyond forty.