EDMONTON — No one would say it out loud on Saturday morning, so we will: Leon Draisaitl will return to the Oilers lineup tonight after missing four games with an injury.
Draisaitl flew through a morning skate Saturday, centring a line with Viktor Arvidsson and Vasily Podkolzin. With 49 goals so far this season, he’ll resume the hunt for 50 against the Calgary Flames on Hockey Night in Canada tonight on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+ at 8 p.m. MT / 10 p.m. ET.
“I’ll have to check with the doctors, but I felt pretty good this morning,” Draisaitl said after the morning skate. His head coach also refused to confirm that Draisaitl will play.
But he looked like a player who is fit and ready to help a team that has been without both Draisaitl and Connor McDavid for three games, and sounded like one who is ready to step back into the lineup.
“You know, we still haven’t clinched anything. We’ve still got a ways to go here,” the Oilers’ assistant captain said. “We’ve got to win some hockey games and dial in our game a little bit. So you want to be a part of that.”
He’d have come back earlier had we been in Round 1 of the playoffs.
“I’ll play through anything if it’s at the right time,” he said. “It has happened, unfortunately, the last two playoff runs for us. But I think this is not the time where you tinker with things like that, looking at the big picture.”
With the nation watching the late game on HNIC, Draisaitl will try to score his 50th on home ice tonight, before the team departs for a four-game road trip on Monday. When the goal comes, it will mark the fourth time he has scored 50 goals and 100 points in the same season.
Draisaitl is still the NHL’s top goal scorer this season, seven goals ahead of Toronto’s William Nylander and 12 up on Kyle Connor of the Winnipeg Jets.
“It’s very special,” Draisaitl said of the 50-goal plateau. “I grew up as, well, certainly not a goal scorer. Always been a passer, and I worked a lot at (the scoring) part of my game. For that to shine through still means a lot to me. Whenever it happens, I’ll be very, very excited about it.”
This is the first extended period with neither Draisaitl nor McDavid in the Oilers lineup in a decade. The Oilers went 1-2 with both of them out, and fought back to grab a point from Winnipeg in the game that McDavid was injured in.
“For the most part, I liked how the guys played,” Draisaitl said. “Obviously, (the 6-1 loss in Seattle) is a bit of a wash … but we put up a fight in every game, made it a game against Dallas, which was nice to see. Big picture, it’s good for guys to get two, three more minutes a night and find their game a little bit more, so I think it was probably for the better.”
There’s a school of thought that says, despite being injured, Edmonton’s two superstars will benefit from the time off right before a playoff run. But again, the rest comes due to injuries to both players.
Does Draisaitl see the benefit?
“Theoretically, yes,” he mused. “Would I rather have played the three or four games? Absolutely.”
Edmonton has lost touch of Vegas for first place in the Pacific, but heading into tonight’s game, they are two points back of second place Los Angeles with two games left against the Kings.
“Of course, we would like to finish second. We’d like to finish first, but … that’s a little out of reach,” Draisaitl admitted. “Finishing second is important. Home ice is good for Game 7, of course.
“But we did three rounds last year of (opening on the road), and we found a way to make every series count.”
Defenceman Matias Ekholm will not play tonight for the Oilers, while goalie Stuart Skinner is listed as day-to-day with a concussion.
