Eishockey Leon Draisaitl
“All I want is the Stanley Cup”
Status: 08:57 am | Reading time: 4 minutes
By Dirk Schlickmann, Steven Jörgensen
No longer a team of pure show-stoppers: Leon Draisaitl and the Edmonton Oilers
Quelle: Getty Images via AFP/DEREK CAIN
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Leon Draisaitl is closer to his big goal than ever before. The German ice hockey star is in the NHL final with the Edmonton Oilers against the Florida Panthers. One reason for his success: striker Draisaitl has learned how to defend.
For two weeks, Leon Draisaitl has had moral support from home. His father Peter, a 146-time national player and sports director at second division club Krefeld, lives with his son in Edmonton and is at every game in the hall. “I’m always happy when he’s here. He can still give me valuable tips,” says Draisaitl junior, 28 years old and 30 years younger than his father.
Before his eyes, Draisaitl and his Edmonton Oilers first eliminated the Los Angeles Kings (4:1 wins), then the Vancouver Canucks (4:3) and finally the Dallas Stars (4:2) in the playoffs. The striker has been playing in the NHL for ten years – this is the first time he has reached the final. On Sunday (June 9) the best-of-seven final series against the Florida Panthers begins in Sunrise, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale.
“I am extremely proud of Leon,” says Peter Draisaitl: “He is never satisfied and works every day to become even better. He has not let setbacks deter him.”
Nowitzki is Draisaitl’s role model
Now Leon Draisaitl is about to crown his exceptional career. He scored 955 points in 786 games and was voted the NHL’s best player in 2020. But all of that is of only marginal interest to him. “All I want is the Stanley Cup. That’s what I’m playing for,” he says. “And winning it with Edmonton would be especially nice because we built everything here together.”
Draisaitl’s role model is NBA legend Dirk Nowitzki (45), who won the title with Dallas on his 13th attempt. Draisaitl is currently making his tenth attempt. “Dirk never gave up and was rewarded in the end,” says Draisaitl.
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Now he is closer than ever to the Stanley Cup, which weighs 20 kg and is 90 cm tall. The Oilers and Draisaitl have learned to defend. Until now, they were seen as a team of pretty players who scored spectacular goals up front but were open at the back. This is all the more true when the play-offs are tough and dirty.
“We now have more balance in the game. I’m also paying more attention to the defense,” says Draisaitl, who has been injured for four weeks but is gritting his teeth. “We’ve learned from our experiences. Now we realize that games don’t always have to be beautiful. The main thing is that we win.”
The hardest worker gets a suction cup
A dressing room ritual illustrates the new direction: after each victory, the best creative player is symbolically presented with a painter’s cap and brush, and the hardest worker is given a suction cup. Previously, only the artists were honored.
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“We’re not finished yet. We still need four wins,” says Draisaitl. “If we actually win the Stanley Cup, the fans here will tear the city apart.” The Oilers last made it to the NHL final in 2006.
Five German players have already won the Stanley Cup, but all of them have played more of a supporting role. Draisaitl, on the other hand, is the Oilers’ superstar alongside his strike partner Connor McDavid. In the 18 play-off games so far, he has scored 28 points (ten goals and 18 assists). He can add to that in the final series.
These Germans won the Stanley Cup
The previous highest score in a German championship season was achieved by Uwe Krupp (58) in 1996 with Colorado: He scored 16 points (four goals, twelve assists) in 22 appearances. Among other things, he scored the winning goal in the final against Florida (4:0) – in a 1:0 triumph in the third overtime. In his second Cup victory in 2002 with Detroit, Krupp remained pointless in two appearances.
Dennis Seidenberg (42) scored eleven points for Boston in 2011 (one goal, ten assists in 25 games). In the final series (4:3 against Vancouver) he provided three assists, two of which came in the seventh game (4:0).
Tom Kühnhackl (32) won the Cup with Pittsburgh in 2016 and 2017. In 2016, he had five points in the playoffs (two goals, three assists in 24 games), but in the final he had zero points in six games. He did not play in the final series of the second title in 2017, having previously scored two points in eleven games in the playoffs.
Nico Sturm with the Stanley Cup
Quelle: Getty Images/Bruce Bennett
Nico Sturm (29) played in all six final games in 2022 for Colorado against Tampa Bay (4:2), providing one assist. In the playoffs, he had a total of two assists in 13 games.
Goalkeeper Philipp Grubauer (32) was only used twice in the play-offs during Washington’s 2018 triumph (4.57 goals conceded on average), not in the final.
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The article was researched for the Sports Competence Center (WELT, SPORT BILD, BILD) and first published in SPORT BILD.
