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December 18, 2025Draisaitl ist eine Eishockeylegende
EDMONTON, AB - MARCH 30: Edmonton Oilers Center Leon Draisaitl (29) skates up ice in the second period of the Edmonton Oilers game versus the Los Angeles Kings on March 30, 2023 at Rogers Place in Edmonton, AB. (Photo by Curtis Comeau/Icon Sportswire)
December 17, 2025 by Ryan Lotsberg
Alongside the mighty Rhine river and underneath the grand spires of a stunning Gothic-style cathedral in Western Germany lies the fourth largest city in the country, Köln.
From the Köln Cathedral, if you walk East across the Hohenzollern Bridge and continue that direction for a total of 25 minutes, you will reach Lanxess Arena, the home of the Kölner Haie hockey team (Köln Sharks). The 18,734 seat venue is where the Edmonton Oilers played an exhibition match against the Kölner Haie on October 3, 2018.
If you continue walking past Lanxess Arena for another six minutes, you will find the practice facility for the Kölner Haie. My German friends and local tour guides told me that those are the only two ice hockey arenas in Leon Draisaitl’s home town.
The beginnings were humble for Draisaitl in Köln, but he has achieved so much in the NHL. His latest accomplishment came on Tuesday night in Pittsburgh where he earned his 1000th NHL point.
Former teammate and newly acquired Pittsburgh Penguin Brett Kulak sat in the penalty box while Draisaitl’s teammates poured onto the ice to celebrate the accomplishment. Stuart Skinner, who was tending the Penguins goal in an Oilers mask just four days after being traded, stood in the crease as if his friends and former teammates weren’t celebrating Draisaitl’s historic achievement mere feet away from him.
As Skinner said after the game, it had to be bittersweet for him and Kulak to have all of that unfold the way it did and to not be able to celebrate their friend’s incredible achievement on the ice with the Oilers; but none of that takes away from Draisaitl’s accomplishment.
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Draisaitl became the fifth fastest player from outside North America to record 1,000 NHL points, doing so in 824 games. Only Nikita Kucherov (809), Jaromir Jagr (763), Jari Kurri (716), and Peter Stastny (682) did it faster. Only twenty players regardless of nationality have accomplished the feat faster than Draisaitl did. Incredibly, he’s the fifth Oiler to score 1,000 points, and the other four all did it in fewer games. Draisaitl trailed Mark Messier by just two games.
As you could probably guess, Draisaitl sits fifth in all-time Oilers franchise scoring. Assuming he stays healthy, he will move past Messier and Kurri into third on that list before the season is over. Draisaitl is already one of the greatest Oilers, and he’s still in his prime.
On October 17, 2023, Draisaitl passed Glenn Anderson to become the new Oilers franchise leader in powerplay goals. He now has a 56-goal lead over Anderson. Draisaitl is the trigger man on an Oilers powerplay that set an all-time proficiency record in 2022-23 (32.4%) and continues to be one of the NHL’s best units, a distinction they have held for pretty much all of the 2020’s. That 56-goal lead will increase substantially over the course of the next seven seasons of his current contract with the Oilers.
Alex Ovechkin scored 50 or more goals and got over 100 points in the same season in four out of five seasons between his rookie season in 2005-06 and 2009-10. Draisaitl is the only player to have done that since, and he’s done it in three of the last four seasons. That’s the best way to explain how good Draisaitl is.
He’s regarded as the best backhand passer in the game, and he was viewed as more of a playmaker than a goal scorer in the early days of his career. That “playmaker” also has one of the best one-timers in the world, and he can score with it from inconceivable angles.
The Deutschland Dangler dictates the pace of the game. He can beat defenders with his deceptive speed, but he can slow the game down by holding the puck and making a ridiculous cross-ice pass using his exceptional vision. He can also use his large frame to protect the puck better than anyone in the NHL right now. Slowing the game down allows him to dissect defences.
There’s a lot to appreciate about Draisaitl, not just on the ice. His dry German wit and his spicy sarcasm make him a must-watch interview. Perhaps the thing that Oilers fans appreciate the most about him is his love for the city of Edmonton and the Oilers franchise. Draisaitl has chosen to dedicate at least nineteen years of his professional hockey career to Edmonton, which is something that no other iconic franchise great has done up to this point.
Köln has a spectacular cathedral and a bigger river flowing through it, but it’s about the same size as Edmonton. Draisaitl has chosen to stick with a smaller city not dissimilar to the one he grew up in rather than bailing for the brightest lights or the warmest climates, which is commendable.
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It’s been a huge year for Draisaitl. He made his second appearance in a Stanley Cup Final, he married the love of his life, and he scored his 1000th NHL point. He will also represent Germany at the upcoming Olympic Winter Games in Milan.
Glückwunsch Leon. Du bist mehr als eine Legende in Deutschland und Edmonton. Du bist eine Eishockeylegende.
(Congratulations Leon. You’re more than a legend in Germany and Edmonton. You’re a hockey legend.)
