Who is NHL’s deadliest dual scoring threat? It’s definitely Draisaitl

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Seems like we’ve been talking about Leon Draisaitl quite a bit at the Cult of Hockey lately. Pre-game Saturday, when I wrote of his impending return to a depleted Edmonton Oilers line-up badly in need of a boost. Post-game, when David Staples awarded him the highest grade of any Oiler after yet another brilliant performance by #29 powered the squad to a thrilling comeback win over Calgary Flames. The #1 item in Kurt Leavins’ Sunday column, 9 Things. Draisaitl in the headline and the feature image each time, not to mention front and centre in the post-game podcast embedded in this post.

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So, enough about Leon already, right?

Yeah, no.

There were many layers to his performance on Saturday, and the statistical fallout was fascinating. To this amateur hockey historian, statistics buff and oh yeah, Oilers fan since the beginning, a deeper dive is mandatory.

A milestone goal was scored. A modern mark for active players was achieved. An (unrelated) NHL record  was set. In the process, the Oilers won a very big hockey game, not to mention the season series, against their provincial rivals. Let’s start there.

Oilers 3, Flames 2 (OT)

The Oilers entered the game in a tail spin, having posted a 1-2-1 record in the 4 games since Draisaitl got hurt. That included regulation losses on Wednesday and Thursday that had the Oilers running in place as wild card teams including St. Louis, Vancouver and oh yeah Calgary made stealthy progress. A loss in this game, especially in regulation, would have meant an 0-3 week with white-hot Vegas looming next.

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So the return of one of their top stars was a very welcome sight, doubly so when Draisaitl came out flying from the first shift. He tested Dustin Wolf several times without success, though he did manage to feed Viktor Arvidsson for the 1-1 goal late in the second. But when Calgary regained the lead midway in the third, things looked grim. That’s a very tough defensive club, with a Calder Trophy candidate in net.

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Everything turned in Edmonton’s favour in the game’s 57th minute via a single bolt from the blue. Darnell Nurse made a terrific defensive stop in front of the Edmonton bench, then Evan Bouchard made a rink-wide pass that found Draisaitl surging up the right wing boards. He poured into Flames territory, beat d-man Kevin Bahl to the outside, made a late cut, picked his spot and let fly from just below the faceoff dot, 29 (!) feet out. The perfectly placed snap shot beat Wolf above the right pad and outside the blocker and nestled just inside the post, pretty much in the spot where the netting is tied to the goal frame. So powerful was the drive that even after hitting the twine, the puck continued its trajectory upward and into the roof of the cage to provide a particularly pleasing visual effect.

Not “just” another goal, but Draisaitl’s 50th of the season. One of the sport’s most cherished milestones. the 50-goal plateau has maintained an elevated value among hockey players and fans for all of the 60+ years I have followed the sport, dating all the way back to Rocket Richard 80 years ago. It’s not always thus, but this milestone goal was an especially important tally that tied the score late, salvaging at least a point and setting the stage for overtime…

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Where Draisaitl was the central character yet again, winning a puck battle in his own zone and shrugging Nazem Kadri to the ice in the process, in effect creating a rink length 3-on-2. He bumped the puck up to Jeff Skinner, joined the rush to take the return pass and again fire an outside shot, this time from between the faceoff circles. It was a little further out (37 feet) from a more direct angle, but the result was the same: Wolf beaten blocker side in pretty much the exact same spot. Overpowered again.

Both goals had sufficient kinetic energy to lift 18,347 fans to their feet, give or take the odd Flames supporter I suppose. The game tied, the game won, an old rival vanquished, two big standings points in the bank. I would submit this was the game of the year, regular season edition.

How much difference did Draisaitl’s return make? Let’s start by considering the fact that statistically this game was as close as they can get. According to Natural Stat Trick, in all situations the Oilers had a 51% share of shot attempts (63-60)  shots on goal (29-28), aand a 50% share of high danger chances (10-10). Our own counts of Grade A shots (11-11) and 5-alarm shots (4-4) also found no discernible difference between the two clubs. It was a game that was deservedly tied before that decisive shot in the 63rd minute.

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But the Oilers were in effect two different teams: dominant when Draisaitl was on the ice, chasing the game when he wasn’t. Here’s analytics whiz and host of the excellent Hockey PDOcast Dimitri Filipovic with the long and short of it:

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Welcome back, Leon. Your team really needs you.

One for the record book

Let’s go in reverse order and dig into Goal #51 first. That was of course the overtime winner, Draisaitl’s sixth of the season. That sets an all-time NHL record in the 66 seasons that OT has been part of the regular season equation (1917-1942, 1983-2025).

Not surprising that the top of the list is dominated by stars from the 3-on-3 “every game has a winner” era; those tied for the old mark of 5 include famous modern names Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Toews, Brad Marchand, Sebastian Aho, and dark horse Alex Galchenyuk. It’s worth noting the earlier mark of 4, accomplished 25 times over the years, was set as far back as 1929-30 when hockey legends Howie Morenz and Frank Finnegan both turned the trick. But only Leon Draisaitl has ever scored 6 OT winners in the same (regular) season.

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Draisaitl’s 9 overtime points are also thought to be a record, albeit a shared one with Oilers teammate Connor McDavid who has collected 0-9-9 in the extra frame this year. At least one of them was in on 11 of the 12 overtime wins (shootout not included) the Oilers have recorded this season, which I understand is itself 1 off the league record.

Conclusion: game breakers gonna break games.

More game-breaking

In the current campaign Draisaitl leads the league with 11 game-winning goals, including those 6 OT winners. He’s delivered a point on 24 GWG, 57% of Edmonton’s total of 42 wins in regulation or overtime.

The league doesn’t officially keep track of game-tying goals anymore, but they are more important than ever in the 3-point game era. Not surprisingly, Draisaitl leads the Oilers in this category as well, and in fact is the only one to score an actual tying goal with the netminder pulled, doing so at both Toronto and St. Louis and nearly a third time at home vs. the Leafs until John Klingberg was found to have preceded the puck over the blueline by 1 zapruder.

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Other late heroics have abounded, last night’s 2-2 goal at 16:48 of the third adding another log to that fire. A huge goal at a huge moment.

The takeaway, borne on long evidence, is that Draisaitl is an absolute ace when the game is on the line.

50-goal seasons

Just 14 active players have hit the “magic” 50-goal mark, a total of 28 times (list), led in runaway fashion by Alex Ovechkin with a remarkable 9 such campaigns. Draisaitl is a clear second with 4, while no other active player has accomplished the feat more than twice.

Among those to do it are FOUR current Oilers, led by Draisaitl and including McDavid, Zach Hyman and Corey Perry who have each done it once.

Raise the bar to include seasons where a player has scored both 50 goals and 50 assists and the air becomes more rarefied still, even as Draisaitl has himself done this in all 4 of his 50-goal campaigns.

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50-50 seasons

This seems to be a lot bigger deal in baseball than it is in hockey, but it’s a rare feat in either sport.

Cast your mind back to Game 82 of the 2018-19 season, when Draisaitl hit the 50-goal mark for the first time at Calgary. Alas, the headlines that night were of McDavid getting badly injured by a Mark Giordano clip that ruined his summer.

That overshadowed Draisaitl becoming the first NHLer since Geno Malkin back in 2011-12 to hit for 50 goals and 50 assists in the same season. It went completely under the radar; whereas Malkin had won the Hart Trophy with 99% of the vote in ’11-12, Draisaitl didn’t receive a single vote — not even for fifth place — in ’18-19. The Oilers had missed the playoffs, see, and McDavid still finished third in Hart voting with all teammates presumed to be riding his coattails. No room at the inn for another Oiler, no matter how impressive his credentials.

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That all changed just one year later, when Draisaitl did win the Hart, Ted Lindsay and Art Ross trophies. He’d been on pace for another 50-50 season when the curtain unceremoniously dropped on the (regular) season after 71 games due to the COVID shutdown.

After scoring at “just” a 45-goal rate in the 56-game all-Canadian season of 2021, Leon bounced back with consecutive 50-50 outputs in the two full seasons that followed. Last year a slight dip to a still fantastic 41-65-106 before the Big Diesel ramped up his game to a new level in 2024-25.

Which makes four 50-50 seasons in all (so far). That’s the most of any NHLer during the now 20 seasons of the Salary Cap era, during which time the “dual threat” feat has been accomplished just 17 times (list). Draisaitl had previously been tied with Alex Ovechkin, who had three such seasons between 2005-10 after which he’s become more of a goal-scoring specialist / legend and not so much of a playmaker.

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Here’s the slightly shorter list of active players who have accomplished this feat, an elite group to say the least.

Make it Draisaitl 4, Ovechkin 3, Crosby, Malkin, McDavid, Pastrnak, Rantanen, MacKinnon once each. Poseurs need not apply.

Special shout-out to McDavid who is the only 60-60 man of the current century.

In the past thirteen years which includes ten “full” seasons of 82 games, 50-50 seasons have been accomplished eight times in all: four times by Leon Draisaitl, and four times by the rest of the NHL combined. Such repeated pinnacles of goal scoring plus playmaking present strong evidence for the supposition at the top of this page, that Drai is the best dual threat in the modern game.

40/100 seasons

Let’s tinker with the “dual threat” parameters slightly, targeting seasons with at least 40 goals and 100 points. This loosens the boundaries slightly to include ace playmakers like Patrick Kane, Nikita Kucherov and Matthew Tkachuk who have never hit the 50-goal plateau, and snipers like Auston Matthews who has never mustered as many as 50 assists. It produces an expanded but still elite group of 16 active players and 35 seasons.

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I’ll spare you the full list (which can be found here) and simply summarize the numbers of seasons:

• 6 times: Draisaitl
• 4 times: Ovechkin, McDavid
• 2 times: Malkin, P.Kane, Kucherov, MacKinnon, Matthews, Pastrnak, Rantanen, M.Tkachuk
• 1 time: Crosby, Kaprizov, Panarin, Stamkos, J.Robertson

I’ll again argue the top dual threat is at the top of that list as well. There may be better pure goal scorers elsewhere in the game — though damn few of them. There may be better playmakers, though that list too would be extremely short. But when it comes to players who are equally adept at both, Leon Draisaitl is the bomb.

Recently at the Cult of Hockey

STAPLES: Mixed bag of injury news for Oilers

LEAVINS: The Hart of a Leon! Draisait’s legend grows — 9 Things

STAPLES: Player grades from O/T triumph over Calgary

McCURDY: Guess who’s back? 

STAPLES: NHL legend says Oilers must better protect their goalies

McCURDY: Player grades from one-sided loss at Seattle

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