Though Leon Draisaitl’s next contract is the talk of the town, let’s not forget about his previous one.
There’s a groundswell of rumours these days that Edmonton Oilers superstar Leon Draisaitl is about to sign a long-term extension with the club, largely expected to be the maximum term of eight years. So reported the Cult of Hockey‘s own David Staples in this blog’s most recent post:
Leon Draisaitl looking for an eight-year deal with Edmonton Oilers, top team insider reports
Not surprising that this issue is coming to the boil. Draisaitl’s extension is clearly priority #1 for the team and has been since Jul 01. That was the opening day of business for the 2024-25 season, marking the start of the final year of the eight-year, $68 million pact he signed back in the summer of 2017 and opening the window for negotiations. Hockey Ops boss Jeff Jackson back-burnered it somewhat when he said the Oilers wanted their next GM in place before beginning talks, but that box was checked last week when Edmonton controversially hired Stan Bowman to that job.
This being Oil Country, the next question is automatic. Now that the new GM is on the job, what’s taking him so long?
While Oil fans impatiently await for some actual hard news on the extension, let’s take a moment to hearken back on the last contract Draisaitl signed. That one landed on 2017 August 16, after the Big Diesel had technically been a restricted free agent for a month and a half after a breakout campaign and playoffs.
Peter Chiarelli did much of his best work as Oilers GM that summer, first signing McDavid to an eight-year, $100 million extension that would kick in a full season later, then wrapping up Draisaitl for a similar term at the somewhat lower price of $68 million. Expressed as average annual value, it was $12.5 mil for Connor, $8.5 for Leon, delivering cost certainty for the brilliant young duo who at the time were aged 20 and 21.
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Oilers’ fans can now look forward to eight more years of watching this player in his prime. Given the nature of the investment, it seems likely Draisaitl and McDavid will be split out on to separate lines, though will surely remain on the same (devastating) powerplay. Of course the ability to unite them on the same line any time Oilers really need a goal will remain a viable option for Coach Todd McLellan and potentially, his successors. (In hockey, eight years is a long, loooong time.)
In Draisaitl the Oil have a focused, level-headed player whose maturity exceeds his still-tender age. He’s the sort of player to build a team around, and the fact that he will be doing so playing second fiddle to a generational talent in McDavid should ensure the Oilers are a force to be reckoned with for a very long time.
Most of which has come to pass, I respectfully suggest. Todd McLellan has indeed had successors, three so far. Turned out all four of them really liked the option of putting the dynamic duo together “any time the Oilers really need a goal”, even as the separate-lines option is generally the first choice. (In 2023-24, for example, Draisaitl played just over 60% of his 5v5 minutes away from McDavid, then nearly 70% in the postseason.) That devastating powerplay has grown ever-more powerful as time has gone by. Certainly the Oilers have become a force to be reckoned with, advancing deep into the playoffs the last three years only to be eliminated by the eventual Stanley Cup champion each time.
What is beyond question is that the McDavid-Draisaitl tandem has emerged as the NHL’s dominant scorers. How dominant? Here are the league’s cumulative scoring leaders for the first seven years of the Draisaitl pact:
Bear in mind that not all of those seasons were created equal: the 2019-20 season (Leon’s MVP campaign) was truncated to just 71 games due to the COVID outbreak that drew things to a screeching halt. Then just 56 games were on the slate in 2020-21. Meaning that the average season of the seven was something under 77 game, making that 100-point average all the more challenging.
The above numbers, adapted from NHL.com are just the tip of iceberg for Leon Draisaitl, one of the true workhorses of the NHL. Check out this variety of categories, all adapted from the same source. Over the first seven years of his contract, Draisaitl appeared on these leaderboards:
Games played: 6th with 528 (of a possible 537), behind Kopitar, DeBrincat, Gaudreau, Backlund, Reinhart. He missed 4 games after taking a Jacob Trouba shoulder-cap in the chin early in the 2017-18 season, nearly invulnerable since. Ovcerall, a 98.3% attendance rate.
Time on ice: 2nd with 11,410 minutes, just 2 minutes behind McDavid and over 3 hours more than any other NHL forward
Simply put, Leon Draisaitl is a workhorse. The guy has been logging big minutes night after night and posting a whole lot of crooked numbers. Besides the obvious offensive prowess, he has become the Oilers top faceoff man, at times even given FOGO (face off, get off) responsibilities for key defensive zone draws. Somewhere in there he became the go-to guy for 3v5 penalty killing. He plays centre, he plays wing, he’s a charismatic man who is a whole lot of fun to watch.
Some will glom on to his high turnover rate, but that goes with the territory for guys who handle the puck a lot and try to do creative things with it (see: the other leaders). Tellingly, he works hard at winning the puck back, ranking very near the top of the takeaways category as well.
When Draisaitl’s pact first kicked in back in 2017-18, according to Spotrac he had the 9th highest cap hit of any NHL forward, tied with Steven Stamkos. That seemed pretty pricey for a guy who finished T-34th among forwards in scoring with 70 points that season.
So, how did it progress thereafter? Pretty darned well, that’s how.
Draisaitl contract rank 2017-25
With each subsequent year, Draisaitl’s $8.5 million cap hit gradually slipped down the rankings of NHL forwards, into the teens, then the 20s. By the season to come it won’t even be in the top 30.
But ever since that first year, he’s consistently been among the league scoring leaders, typically on both the goals and assists side of the ledger. He was top 4 for five consecutive years before sliding all the way back to 7th in the season just past.
Might that be the first sign of decline? I guess maybe, even as in his “down” year he became the first NHLer in the salary cap era to hit the 40-goal mark and the 100-point plateau five times each. This guy has been and remains an elite scorer, and there is no basket of stats more likely to drive salary than point production. As the above table shows, he’s been massive value for six years running.
Every single guy among the 25 listed up top who have averaged 70 points per season is getting paid. Not a player on that list who will have collected less than $45 million over the eight years. Collectively they’ve averaged north of $8 million per season, and if one discounts a handful of ELC seasons for early bloomers like McDavid and a handful of others, the average salary for the group has been north of $8.5 million. Which is to say that Leon Draisaitl, second on that entire list for production, comes in just below average on the remuneration front when comparing apples to apples (second and subsequent contracts).
It was a heckuva deal Peter Chiarelli negotiated back in the day, paid off in spades. Today there’s no reasonable argument that the player hasn’t earned a healthy raise, and if his desire is another eight-year pact, the organization will likely feel obliged to step up. The key will be to find the middle ground that keeps everyone happy and the team competitive.
