SUNRISE, Fla. — His voice hoarse with emotion, Leon Draisaitl was understandably reluctant to look too far into the future less than an hour after seeing a Stanley Cup dream slip through his fingers.
“You’re one period, one shot, away from maybe winning the thing, and now you’ve got to go through 82 regular-season games again and play well enough to even get a kick at it,” Draisaitl said. “It’s hard right now.”
The cruelest twist for the Edmonton Oilers and their crestfallen superstar is that summer has already arrived just as they’re beginning to process Monday’s heart-wrenching Game 7 loss to the Florida Panthers with a championship on the line.
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The Oilers came up just short in ‘Cup or bust’ season — and the path back won’t be easy
Offseason NHL business is already in high gear even as they’re completing one last cross-continent trip home.
And there is arguably no more important business than what happens next for Draisaitl — in Edmonton or anywhere else NHL teams play.
The end of a team-friendly contract is on the horizon for the pending 2025 unrestricted free agent, which means that Draisaitl is officially eligible to sign an extension with the Oilers as of next Monday.
Whether he’s willing to make that kind of commitment in the days or weeks ahead could leave an organization that fell one win shy of the Stanley Cup in a precarious position.
Edmonton is not inclined to let the 28-year-old center simply play out the final year of his contract and walk directly into free agency next July, according to multiple league sources familiar with the front office’s view of the situation.
With Connor McDavid eligible to sign an extension 12 months down the line and the Oilers eager to extend their championship window as long as possible, there is at least some concern about the potential for a “double whammy” in the event Draisaitl were retained for 2024-25 without a new contract in place. It could create a scenario where he leaves for nothing just as McDavid is set to chart his own future.
Letting Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid walk in successive years would be a disaster for the Oilers. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
Any scenario that might see both players leave in quick succession would be catastrophic for Edmonton and must be avoided at all costs.
While the longtime teammates and close friends aren’t a package deal — they’re each operating on the principle of making the best decision tailored for their individual circumstances, according to league sources — they are inextricably linked.
McDavid and Draisaitl own the two best points-per-game totals among all NHL players across the last five years, both in the regular season and playoffs. They’ve helped each other fill trophy cases with individual awards and are both thirsting for the Stanley Cup. They battled together in an all-or-nothing Game 7 on Monday night and came out on the wrong end of a 2-1 score.
“He’s the greatest player to ever play in my books,” Draisaitl said of McDavid afterward. “There are so many things that a lot of people don’t see that he does. He singlehandedly turned our franchise around, pretty much. I love sharing the ice with him. He’s a really, really special person.”
The schedule-maker did the Oilers and Panthers no favors with the late timing of this Cup Final. Florida counts core contributors Sam Reinhart, Brandon Montour and Oliver Ekman-Larsson among its group of pending UFAs and now has five days to figure out if it can get new deals done before those players hit the open market.
The Oilers’ list of UFAs includes Connor Brown, Mattias Janmark, Warren Foegele, Adam Henrique, Corey Perry, Sam Carrick and Vincent Desharnais, and the team intends to try to retain three or four of those players, depending on their salary expectations, according to team sources.
With exit meetings scheduled in Edmonton for later this week, those decisions will likely need to come pretty quickly.
There is a little more time to sort through everything with Draisaitl, who has a resume that would justify a salary request that matches or exceeds the NHL-leading $13.25 million currently being pulled in by Toronto Maple Leafs forward Auston Matthews annually.
That would represent a significant raise on the $68 million, eight-year deal he signed in 2017 — a contract Draisaitl wound up delivering excess value on while winning a Hart Trophy, putting up three 50-goal seasons and five times amassing at least 100 points.
Given the length of their playoff run and the fact it’s only just ended, the Oilers haven’t yet even broken serious ground on what an extension might look like for Draisaitl. The player and his camp will dictate what happens next. Draisaitl turns 30 soon after his next contract begins, so it’ll almost certainly be a long-term pact that covers all of the best remaining years of his NHL career.
Where does he want to spend them?
The No. 3 pick from 2014 has expressed a desire to “finish the job” by winning in Edmonton but acknowledged during an interview with Sportsnet in January that he’ll need to weigh factors beyond hockey, saying: “There are lots of things that go into it. Lots of things that play a role in these situations.”
Trying to get him extended is considered a “massive priority” for the Oilers at the outset of this offseason, but they’ll pivot if he shows any reluctance to commit. They’ve got some wiggle room to trade Draisaitl, if it comes to that, since his contract includes a 10-team trade list alongside a no-movement clause.
A player of his pedigree seldom, if ever, gets dealt while still in the prime of his NHL career, and he’d command a haul in return. Were the Oilers to go that route, it would be a franchise-defining move geared toward reloading the roster in time to convince McDavid that his own championship aspirations can still be realized in Edmonton.
Of course, the organization’s preferred course of action would be to keep its two-headed monster together for the long haul.
That’s a proven formula for success.
Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch has the ability to put Connor McDavid (center) and Leon Draisaitl (right) together when needed or to let Draisaitl carry his own line. (Leila Devlin / Getty Images)
Even though Draisaitl’s goal-scoring dried up in a Stanley Cup Final in which he was limited to just three assists — it won’t be a surprise to learn in the coming days that he was hampered by an injury or ailment — he still finished the postseason with 31 points while having Dylan Holloway as his most frequent linemate at five-on-five.
“Leon has done tremendously well,” Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch said. “You look at the superstars around the league and who they get to play with. You look at (Nikita) Kucherov has (Brayden) Point, and (Nathan) MacKinnon (has Mikko) Rantanen, and (John) Tavares or (Auston) Matthews with (Mitch) Marner and (William) Nylander. Leon doesn’t get enough credit for what he accomplishes without playing with another star.
“Most superstars have another star to play with, and Leon gets to play with Connor sometimes, but not always.”
When the sting of a loss in the Stanley Cup Final starts to wear off, Draisaitl will have to decide where his playing future lies.
(Top photo: Bob Frid / USA Today)
