Leon Draisaitl is not having a good season, he's having a great season

[KlefDown]

Drai is top 5 and he's not 4 and not 3

 

[MessierII]

Guy is insane and a beast on the puck. Treat to watch.

Cant see McDavid beating him for the art ross with his play at this point and kuch and McKinnon also consistently blowing him out of the water. 1 assist for McDavid while big three all had massive nights

The thing a lot of people forget about McDavid is he has never once in his career had a more productive first half of the season than back half. McDavid just keeps getting better as the year goes on where as with Leon I can see him tapering off a bit saving himself for the playoffs.

 

[Video Nasty]

Leading (or second to McDavid) for Art Ross/Rocket with some separation by mid-season from his peers wouldn't be too out of the question I hope, especially in the next 8 years, but to me the keyword is separation. Is that reasonable?

You’re ignoring that his value not only revolves around his on the ice top 5 player status, but also helping to keep McDavid in Edmonton. If you think he’s overpaid by a couple of million, which he really isn’t, it’s worth it assuming McDavid resigns, which is likely.

 

[On The Prowl]

oh thats not what Im saying, Drai is a top 5 player maybe even top 3. just I dont know how your points dont get inflated a little playing with the best player in the world even if its just on the PP> its just going to result in higher point totals. does Drai need him though? no for sure he doesnt

no player is perfect, even McDavid has areas he can work on. like faceoffs lol

McDavids points are being inflated playing with Draisaitl too, they have a type of chemistry that helps both players become better.

 

[TheLegend27]

Guy is insane and a beast on the puck. Treat to watch.

Cant see McDavid beating him for the art ross with his play at this point and kuch and McKinnon also consistently blowing him out of the water. 1 assist for McDavid while big three all had massive nights

Weren’t you the one who said McDavid wouldn’t hit 150 then hid away after he did?. At this point betting the opposite of what you say on McDavid is safer than investing in treasury securities.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

This the classic 'this team would suck if you take away their best player argument'. It applies to every team in the NHL. I totally agree with your point but if they had Bozak, they'd still have 7 million in cap space (using his highest cap hit).

But, yes, 100%, if you replace the best player on a team with a shittier one (no knock on Bozak but that is a hell of dropoff) then the team will be worse and individual point totals will go down.

has nothing to do with Edmonton in general. its pretty simple. McDavid inflates his numbers
if Drai was with a guy like Bozak we would likely see his true numbers. although it doesnt matter Drai doesnt need McDavid but for sure his points are higher from being McDavids lineup throughout his career

McDavids points are being inflated playing with Draisaitl too, they have a type of chemistry that helps both players become better.

no 100% as well it goes both ways not just one way

 

[daver]

I didn't include those because you specifically referenced 2008 and 2009 cup finals suggesting that the reason that the Pens were successful is that Crosby and Malkin played little together and that the team was successful because they produced so well apart. In fact, the stats don't show that the pair out produced McDavid and Draisaitl apart or together.

In the 2007-2008 through 2008-2009 playoffs here are the numbers in terms of team production:

Crosby and Malkin together:

TOI 68 GF/60 5.28

Crosby without Malkin

TOI 585 GF/60 2.66

Malkin without Crosby

TOI 582 GF/60 2.92


For McDavid and Leon the last three years.

McDavid and Draisaitl

TOI 374 GF/60 6.1

McDavid without Draisaitl

TOI 545 GF/60 3.41

Draisaitl without McDavid

TOI 476 GF/60 2.65

It should also be noted that the numbers for Draisaitl and McDavid together are somewhat skewed by the injuries Draisaitl had in both 2023 and 2024 playoffs. This is especially true in 2023 where Leon had a significant high ankle sprain that made it difficult for him to play center on his own line.

The other thing that needs to be noted is that pp goals count. Malkin and Crosby played almost exclusively together on the pp and with the two on the ice the pens put up 9.6 GF/60. Similarly the Oilers duo also played mostly exclusively together and in their case the pp scoring rate was 12.53 GF/60.

/60 stats are flawed and even moreso when comparing from different seasons. In their era, Crosby and Malkin put up elite numbers at ES for their era without each other in '08 and '09.

BTW, Malkin was injured in Game 1 of the 2008 ECF. At the time he was leading the playoffs in scoring with 8 goals and 17 points through 10 games (five point shares with Crosby).

Like McDavid, both Crosby and Malkin, when he was healthy, produced regardless of who they are playing with. Draisaitl notably has not put up average numbers, let alone elite, numbers at 5 on 5 in the playoffs without McDavid:

2022 - PLUS 15 with McDavid, MINUS 8 without
2023 - PLUS 4 with McDavid, MINUS 4 without
2024 - PLUS 3 with McDavid, EVEN without

I don't see Draisaitl, at his peak, on Malkin's tier nor the similarity between the respective C combos.

Winning is a team accomplishment. If the team could win simply from two stars producing with or without one another, the Oilers would have won multiple cups.

The 2009 Cup win by the Pens came with arguably the worst supporting cast outside of the top 2 forwards in NHL history. They doubled the next best Pen scorer in both the regular season and in the playoffs.

 

[Fourier]

Thank you for some numbers.

For what it's worth, I didn't say it was not deserved, I said he'll be the most expensive of all of them despite not necessarily separating himself from Kucherov, MacKinnon, Kaprizov on a regular basis.

As your own post shows, he's not typically first in any given category but obviously in the 2-5 range consistently, but next year his contract will lead the League (however temporary that might be with regards to McDavid et al.) and while I'm aware he's already a major personal award winner, the Oilers are paying him to (co?)lead the League in categories en route to a hopeful Cup win on this contract.

If the argument that this is his possible retirement contract and it's payment for services and accomplishments already rendered, I don't know how I feel about that but it's good for players to get paid and he's far from the least deserving on the performance scale.



He's amazing value at 8.5 obviously.

My point was in the first post, not in the reply - it's his next contract that doesn't quite deliver on value based on current and recent body of work, and to be clear I'm not just talking about cap%.


Leading (or second to McDavid) for Art Ross/Rocket with some separation by mid-season from his peers wouldn't be too out of the question I hope, especially in the next 8 years, but to me the keyword is separation. Is that reasonable?



Let's not cite my post like it's the furthest thing from being topically related. Performance metrics are always going to be assessed hand-in-hand with contract value in a salary cap league. I honestly have no idea why you bothered to reply other than your fingers were getting cold or trying to hit your daily post quota.

What you are leaving out is that we are on the edge of a huge potential inflationary period right now as the cap normalizes following the pandemic so comparing new deals with legacy contracts needs context. Any time a player signs a long term deal you have to expect that the money up front will be more than what comparable players are getting on legacy contract. This is especially true when the cap is rising significantly. Right now he is at $8.5M. When that deal was signed many thought it was an over payment. Of course Draisaitl was not the same player he is today but it was also signed at a time when the cap was expected to rise. Even with the pandemic causing several years of little or no growth in the cap inflation made his deal look ridiculously good. Had the pandemic not happened it is quite reasonable to believe that we would be sitting with a cap over $100M right now based on reported revenues. Had the cap been $10-15M higher when McKinnon signed his deal what do you think he would have gotten?

Next year he is at $14M. Five years after than when the cap could well be at $120-130M he will be at $14M. If any of the guys you mentioned were UFA's in say 2026 it is very likely that their contracts would be more than the $14M Draisaitl gets.

For me when I evaluate a players deal I look at a projection of the relative cap hit at the midpoint of the deal to evaluate the deal. I suspect teams do this to a great degree as well in addition to trying to manage immediate cap concerns. With a cap of say $125M, which is conservative, $14M is 11.2% of the cap. Now will Draisaitl still be at the level he is right now? Probably not quite but we don't know. But the number is roughly equivalent to what the Devils are paying Timo Meir in relative dollars.

 

[Fourier]

/60 stats are flawed and even moreso when comparing from different seasons. In their era, Crosby and Malkin put up elite numbers at ES for their era without each other in '08 and '09.

BTW, Malkin was injured in Game 1 of the 2008 ECF. At the time he was leading the playoffs in scoring with 8 goals and 17 points through 10 games (five point shares with Crosby).

Like McDavid, both Crosby and Malkin, when he was healthy, produced regardless of who they are playing with. Draisaitl notably has not put up elite numbers at ES in the playoffs without McDavid.



The 2009 Cup win by the Pens came with arguably the worst supporting cast outside of the top 2 forwards in NHL history. They doubled the next best Pen scorer in both the regular season and in the playoffs.

Like McDavid, both Crosby and Malkin, when he was healthy, produced regardless of who they were playing with. Draisaitl notably has not put up elite numbers at ES in the playoffs without McDavid.

I don't see Draisaitl, at his peak, on Malkin's tier.

I am fully aware of the flaws in using /60 numbers to compare individuals. The main one being that over a season points are not linear in time played. but I not using /60 numbers to evaluate individual scoring rates over a season but rather the team's scoring rate while those players were on the ice. With relatively large sample sizes that major flaws in /60 stats go away in this circumstance. I did this because your claim, which is what I was responding to, was predicated on the production of the pair away from one another being factors in leading the team to success. Individual scoring matters but in the end success of the team comes form how the whole squad performs when they are on the ice.

If Crosby's individual numbers away from Malkin were greater than Draisaitl's away from McDavid, but if the team numbers for the Oilers in this situation were greater than those for the Pens that matters.

The whole 5 vs 5 numbers for an individual away from XXX is extremely complicated. You have to look at who else they played with an how they meshed. For years the Oilers lacked both forward depth and an true offensive defenseman. (The latter being a real key in today's hockey.) For most of his career away from McDavid Draisaitl played with a dog's breakfast of rotating wingers most of whom were third and fourth liners whose career was either ending or never really began.

For example if you look at the years from 2018-2019 through 2020-21 Draisaitl's most common line mates aside from McDavid who he played more than 140 minutes with were in order:

Yamamoto 1020
Kassian 871
Nugent Hopkins 709
Chiasson 671
Kahun 340
Puljujarvi 283
Reider 279
Ganger 141

After that the next five forwards in order were Lucic, Khaira, Caggiula, Archibald.

Kassian's numbers are not so relevant because almost all of the time the spent together was on a line with McDavid. This is true for Lucic as well and to a lesser degree Yamamoto. After these guys it really is a mixture of mutts.

Add in defense, and here are the 9 top guys he played with in order of time on the ice:

Nurse 1550, Larsson 1143, Klefbom 826, Russell 786, Bear 670, Barrie 409, Benning 409, Jones 372, Gravel

Now lets look at Malkin in the 2007-2008 through 2009-2010 period.

Forward other than Crosby with >140 minutes:

Sykora 1228, Fedotenko 946, Malone 555, Dupuis 516, Stall 323, Talbot 278, Cooke 262, Armstrong 214, Guerin 171, Kennedy 164

The one "regular" winger Draisaitl had during this period away from McDavid who was a legitimate top 6 forward was Nugent-Hopkins. With Nugent-Hopkins, Draisaitl scored a 3.38 pts/ 60 rate. Of that group the only guy that Malikn scored at a rate greater than the 3.38 rate Draisaitl had with Nuge was with Guerin at 3.5 over those 171 minutes.

Moreover, when you add in defense the picture becomes clearer:

Orpik 1077, Letang 980, Gonchar 878, Eaton 757, Scuderi 704, Whitney 528, Goligiski 492, Hal Gill 354, Sydor 346

His scoring rates with Whitney, Letang, Gonchar and Sydor were much higher than with guys like Gill, Scuderi and Eaton as one would expect. Similarly Draisaitl's numbers were much better with Barrie (3.37 pts/60) and Nurse (3.25 pts/60) than they were with the Russell and Larsson.

I am not so sure that the narrative that Malkin produced with everyone but Draisaitl didn't has any real basis in fact once you add a little context. The reality is that Draisaitl's individual scoring rate was at least comparable to Malkin's when playing with comparable players.

Here is the other things that needs to be emphasized: The fact that Draisaitl and McDavid are so good together while Crosby and Malkin don't work nearly as well is a testament to Draisaitl's ability to adjust his game to McDavid's style. He should get credit for that, not have his accomplishments diminished for it.

 

[daver]

Here is the other things that needs to be emphasized: The fact that Draisaitl and McDavid are so good together while Crosby and Malkin don't work nearly as well is a testament to Draisaitl's ability to adjust his game to McDavid's style. He should get credit for that, not have his accomplishments diminished for it.

This is merely a spin on the fact that most of the time, the Oilers cannot not roll an effective Top 6 unlike the Pens, Avs and Wings could which directly lead to team success.

And no, throwing out the names of other players on the Avs and Wings in the pre-Cap era doesn't change this.

Draisaitl is a great player. He possibly could be viewed in the same light as Kucherov and MacKinnon as the #2 player over the past 7/8 years if he continues his play this year into the playoffs with another deep run.

But Malkin still reached a level above those players.