This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Leon Draisaitl

Fifty-one goals from inside forty feet on 222 shots, and one from beyond it.

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	EDM	80	52	76	128	+7	24	32	1	11	247	21.1	21:44
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	638	306	438	744	+29	230	125	9	54	1690	18.1	20:27

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 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

52 goals and 76 assists in 80 games — 128 points, second in the league — plus-7, 21:44 a night, 247 shots at 21.1 per cent.

32 of the 52 goals came on the power play, on a unit that generated 8.934 expected goals a sixty — the best figure in the National Hockey League by a distance.

52.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 73rd percentile, with his ice at 74-70 against an expectation of 65.79-58.49. Eight better than the chances at the offensive end and twelve worse at the defensive one.

Nine seasons, 638 games, 744 points. He has scored 50 or more three times.

The Finesse Game

247 shots at a median of 22 feet, 43 per cent from inside twenty and 9 per cent from beyond forty.

Inside forty: 222 shots on goal, 51 goals — 22.97 per cent. Beyond forty: 24 shots, one goal.

Fifty-one of his fifty-two goals came from inside forty feet. A 23 per cent conversion rate over a full season is extraordinary and the distribution is why it is not a fluke: he does not waste attempts, and the 24 he spent from range are the entire cost of the season.

88.4 mph at the 32nd percentile — a below-average registered shot from a man who scored 52. That is the second time on this roster, after McDavid, and it is the strongest single argument in this book against reading shot velocity as shooting.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 209. 23.3 mph at the 94th percentile and 3.3 bursts over twenty a game at the 98th, on 3.22 miles a game at the 92nd.

He has a reputation for being heavy-legged and the feed disagrees emphatically: only a handful of forwards in the league reach twenty miles an hour more often.

24 penalty minutes in 80 games at nearly 22 minutes a night is a very low rate. He protects the puck with his body rather than by hitting anyone, which is a different use of 209 pounds and it is the whole of his physical game.

The Intangibles

Third overall in 2014 out of Cologne, sent back to junior partway through a poor rookie season, and a Hart and an Art Ross by 24.

No player Germany has produced has scored at anything like this rate, and 744 points at 27 is only the beginning of the gap.

What the record does not answer is whether the second-best player on a club is being measured or the best player on most others. He has played 638 games alongside McDavid and there is no version of this book that can separate them.

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

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
16:08 a game at five-on-five, 99th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“Fifty-one of his fifty-two goals came from inside forty feet.”
edgesa strength· changes direction at speed; the forechecker commits and he is gone
“23.3 mph at the 94th percentile and 3.3 bursts over twenty a game at the 98th”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He protects the puck with his body rather than by hitting anyone, which is a different use of 209 pounds and it is the whole of his physical game.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,290 minutes

Expected goals: 52.9%; 74th pct
Shot attempts: 52.2%; 73rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 74 for, 70 against. Expected: 65.8 and 58.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

98th

Numbers

74th

The report ranks him 24 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 82 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, 2022-23 · 80 games

Top speed: 23.3 mph; 95th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 3.26 a game
Distance: 3.22 miles a game
Hardest shot: 88.4 mph; 57th 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

2022-23 · 1290 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, 2022-23

The club: EDM took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.9% — 0.6 below the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,290 minutes at five-on-five — 89th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Zach Hyman	54.5%	51.3%	56.1%
Darnell Nurse	48.7%	56.3%	54.4%
Connor McDavid	57.8%	49.6%	57.1%

54.5% together, 51.3% for him apart and 56.1% for Hyman apart. He was worse away from Hyman, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Hyman did.

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

348 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 52 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 43% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.