When Leon Draisaitl won his first Hart Trophy in 2019-20, he made his case during a stretch when teammate Connor McDavid was out with an injury.
The Oilers had missed the playoffs in back-to-back years in 2017-18 and 2018-19 and found themselves back in the mix in 2019-20 after a hot start to the season. The team cooled off in the winter and were dealt a major blow in February when their captain landed on the Injured Reserve.
McDavid was hurt in a collision with Nashville Predators defenceman Dante Fabbro and imaging later revealed that was dealing with a quadriceps injury that required him to miss a couple of weeks of play. The Oilers went 3-2-1 over what would up being a six-game absence for McDavid.
Draisaitl led the way for the Oilers during McDavid’s time on the shelf. He scored four goals and 12 points over those six games while averaging 25:01 per night.
The season wound up being cut short because of the pandemic but the Oilers got back into the playoffs with a 37-25-9 record. Draisaitl, who found chemistry playing with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Kailer Yamamoto on his wings, shattered the narrative that he was just a winger for McDavid. The German pivot scored 43 goals, led the NHL with 110 points, and won the Hart Trophy for the league’s most valuable player.
Here we are now, five years later.
With McDavid out for three games because of a suspension for cross-checking, Draisaitl will be leaned on heavily by the Oilers. Stepping up and leading Edmonton to a couple of wins with the spotlight on would go a long way in earning Draisaitl the second Hart Trophy of his career.
Through 46 games this season, Draisaitl leads the NHL with 33 goals, putting him pace to set a new career-high in that category with 59. He’s got 69 points, which is tied with Nikita Kucherov for second in the league in scoring and five behind Nathan MacKinnon for top spot.
Draisaitl also leads the league in game-winning goals with nine and even-strength goals with 25, which suggests that he’s been clutch for the Oilers this season and that his stats aren’t being inflated by the team’s elite power play. His league-leading plus-28 rating shows the significant improvement in Draisaitl’s two-way game since 2019-20 when he won the Hart despite having a negative goal differential.
Despite all that, it was MacKinnon who led the way when NHL.com released a mid-season Hart Trophy vote earlier this month.
MacKinnon edged out Kirill Kaprizov of the Minnesota Wild by seven voting points, 60-53. MacKinnon received seven of the 16 first-place votes while Kaprizov got five. Tampa Bay Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov, Edmonton Oilers forward Leon Draisaitl, Vegas Golden Knights forward Jack Eichel, and Winnipeg Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck each got one first-place vote.
Earlier this season, the Oilers went 2-1-0 when McDavid was out with an ankle injury. They picked up a 5-1 win over the Nashville Predators on the road, they beat the Flames by a score of 4-2 in Calgary, and then they returned home and lost 3-0 to the New Jersey Devils. Draisaitl scored six points across Edmonton’s two wins during that three-game stretch.
The Oilers will host the Washington Capitals, Vancouver Canucks, and Buffalo Sabres while McDavid is suspended. The Capitals have the best record in the NHL and represent a possible Stanley Cup Final preview in Edmonton and the Vancouver game will feature a playoff atmosphere between the two Pacific Division rivals.
