Leon Draisaitl

Draisaitl is the son of former German national team player Peter Draisaitl, who represented West Germany and Germany in 146 games, including at World Championships, the World Cup and at the 1988, 1992, and 1998 Olympic Winter Games.

Leon Tim Draisaitl (born 27 October 1995) is a German professional ice hockey centre and alternate captain for the Edmonton Oilers of the National Hockey League (NHL).

Draisaitl was born on 27 October 1995 in Cologne, Germany, to Peter and Sandra Draisaitl.

When he was a child, Draisaitl's father played ice hockey for the Kölner Haie of the Deutsche Eishockey Liga and appeared in three Winter Olympics with the German national team.

Draisaitl played many sports as a child, including soccer, but was most interested in ice hockey.

As an adolescent, Draisaitl played with the Kölner Haie under-16 team and the Adler Mannheim under-18 team while skating on the side with the Ravensburg Towerstars, a team his father coached.

During the 2011–12 German Development League (Deutsche Nachwuchsliga) season, Draisaitl recorded 21 goals and 56 points in 35 games for Jungadler Mannheim and was named the league's Player of the Year.

Draisaitl grew up playing hockey in Germany until he was selected second overall in the 2012 CHL Import Draft by the Prince Albert Raiders.

Coming off his Player of the Year season in the German Development League, Draisaitl was selected second overall in the 2012 CHL Import Draft by the Prince Albert Raiders of the Western Hockey League (WHL).

After two seasons with the Raiders, he was drafted third overall by the Edmonton Oilers in the 2014 NHL Entry Draft.

Draisaitl was drafted third overall in the 2014 NHL Entry Draft by the Edmonton Oilers, making him the highest drafted German-trained player in NHL history (Dany Heatley, selected second overall in 2000, was born in Germany but raised in Canada).

On 12 August 2014, Draisaitl signed a three-year, entry-level contract with Edmonton.

Making the Oilers' NHL opening night roster out of training camp, Draisaitl made his NHL debut on 9 October 2014 against the Calgary Flames.

He scored his first NHL goal on 24 October 2014 against Carolina Hurricanes goaltender Anton Khudobin.

Draisaitl appeared in 37 games for the Oilers during the 2014–15 season, recording two goals and four assists, before being returned to the Prince Albert Raiders.

Draisaitl was traded to the Kelowna Rockets during the 2015 World Junior Championships, the trade made official on 5 January.

Draisaitl helped the Rockets to the 2015 WHL Championship, where he was named playoff MVP after scoring 28 points in 19 games.

Draisaitl won the Stafford Smythe Trophy as Memorial Cup MVP the same year, although the Rockets did not win the 2015 Memorial Cup, losing the championship final in overtime 2–1 to the Oshawa Generals.

The move was made partly to prevent Draisaitl from moving one year closer to free agency which he would have done in July 2015 had he been on the Oilers' roster for more than 40 NHL games).

On 16 March 2016, Draisaitl played his 100th NHL game against the St. Louis Blues.

During the last Oilers game of the 2015-16 NHL season at Rexall Place on 6 April 2016, Draisaitl scored the last NHL goal to be scored there in a 6–2 win over the Vancouver Canucks.

The 2016–17 NHL season saw both Draisaitl and the Oilers reach new levels of success.

On 23 March 2017, he became the first Oiler player since 1990 to have six-straight multi-point games.

Draisaitl finished the regular season with 29 goals, 48 assists and 77 points in all 82 games played, while the Oilers, powered by new captain Connor McDavid and Draisaitl, ended a 10-year playoff drought and clinched a berth in the 2017 Stanley Cup playoffs by finishing second in the Pacific Division.

Facing the San Jose Sharks in the first round, Draisaitl scored his first NHL playoff goal in the Oilers' series-clinching 3–1 Game 6 win.

The Oilers advanced into the second round to meet the Anaheim Ducks.

With the Oilers on the brink of elimination in Game 6 of the series on May 7, Draisaitl became the second youngest Oiler in franchise history to score a hat-trick in the Stanley Cup playoffs and the fifth player in Oilers history to score five or more points in a playoff game, helping the team force Game 7.

The Oilers subsequently were eliminated in a 2–1 loss in Game 7, with Draisaitl's thwarted attempt at a tying goal midway through the third period was dubbed the "save of the game" by the NHL.

On 16 August 2017, Draisaitl signed an eight-year, $68 million contract extension with the Oilers worth an annual average cap hit of $8.5 million.

The signing was controversial at the time in terms of the dollar figure, but it would rapidly in the following years come to be seen as one of the best-value contracts in the league as Draisaitl further developed into a star forward.

Following the playoff success in 2017, expectations were high for the Oilers entering the 2017–18, but it would prove to be a disappointing year both for the team and for Draisaitl.

He dealt with injury that caused him to miss a few games, and correspondingly saw his scoring slightly regress, which caused the Toronto Star to dub him "maddeningly inconsistent."

The team crashed down the standings and missed the playoffs, with the decision-making of general manager Peter Chiarelli increasingly being called into question.

The 2018–19 season saw further disappointments for the team.

A 9–10–1 start saw Chiarelli relieve coach Todd McLellan half way into the season in January 2019, but successor Ken Hitchcock fared no better with 14–14–2 record by mid-January.

After blowout losses, Chiarelli was himself sacked.

In the midst of this, however, Draisaitl had a new career-best season in point production.

In the Oilers' final game of the year on 6 April 2019, Draisaitl became the sixth Oiler (and the first since Craig Simpson in 1987–88) to score at least 50 goals in a season and the ninth Oiler to score at least 100 points in an NHL season, and finished the season with 55 assists and 105 points in all 82 games with his 50 goals being the runner up (behind the 51 goals scored by Washington Capitals captain Alexander Ovechkin) for the Maurice "Rocket" Richard Trophy.

In the off-season, Ken Holland was hired as the team's new general manager.

In 2020, Draisaitl became the first German player to win the Art Ross Trophy as the leading point scorer in the NHL, the Hart Memorial Trophy as regular season MVP, and the Ted Lindsay Award for most outstanding player.