EDMONTON -- Leon Draisaitl wants to return to the Edmonton Oilers before the regular season ends but said he is not going to rush back.
The forward missed his fourth consecutive game because of a lower-body injury when the Oilers defeated the San Jose Sharks 4-2 on Friday.
The Oilers have three regular-season games left before the Stanley Cup Playoffs start next week; at the Winnipeg Jets on Sunday, home against the Los Angeles Kings on Monday and at the Sharks on Wednesday.
“I feel all right, obviously not good enough yet to get into games,” Draisaitl said Friday. “At this time of year, I want to be taking the right steps and feeling as good to 100 percent as I can. It’s improving slowly, but hopefully it won’t be that much longer.”
Draisaitl sustained the injury in a 3-2 win at San Jose on April 3, leaving at 10:08 of the second period. He leads the NHL with 52 goals and is third with 106 points in 71 games. He is 10 points behind Nikita Kucherov of the Tampa Bay Lightning and Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche in the race for the NHL scoring lead.
The Oilers (46-28-5) are third in the Pacific Division, four points behind the Los Angeles Kings (46-24-9). They clinched a playoff berth with Friday's win and will play the Kings in the first round for the fourth straight season.
“I would like to get a game or two, but I also want to put myself in a situation where I’m not making it any worse,” Draisaitl said. “Obviously I want to be smart about it and be careful and cautious with it. Those are the steps that we’re taking right now.”
Draisaitl missed four games from March 20-27 with an undisclosed injury sustained in a 7-1 win against the Utah Hockey Club. He did not have a point in the game, ending an 18-game point streak (14 goals, 13 assists).
“Does he play one of the games on the back-to-back or does he play that last game in San Jose? I would say it’s that last window,” Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said.
“The biggest thing is that we don’t want to push anyone to come back sooner than they should,” Knoblauch said. “We’re looking at the big picture and playing at their best for meaningful games and obviously that is playoff time.”
The Oilers were without Draisaitl, forwards Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (illness), Trent Frederic (ankle), defensemen Jake Walman (undisclosed), and John Klingberg (lower body) against the Sharks. Mattias Ekholm, who had missed the previous seven games and 13 of 17, returned against San Jose but played just 1:25 across two shifts before leaving the game in the first period. Forward Evander Kane (sports hernia, knee) has been skating with the Oilers but is on long-term injured reserve and not available until the playoffs.
Knoblauch expects most of the injured players to return by the start of the postseason and hopes to have a semblance of his playoff lineup together before the end of the regular season.
Captain Connor McDavid returned in a 4-3 win against the St. Louis Blues on Wednesday, getting three assists, and had four assists against San Jose. He had missed the previous eight games with a lower-body injury sustained in a 4-3 overtime loss against Winnipeg on March 20.
“We’re trying to find out what we have for our team,” Knoblauch said. “We haven’t seen that at all. We’ve got players that we’ve added, and we also got so many injuries that we haven’t that formation of what our lines are going to look like and how we’re going to look like as a team. Health is No. 1 and No. 2, we would like to have some idea of what our lineup will look like going into the playoffs.”
Edmonton is looking to go on another extended playoff run after getting to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final last season before losing 2-1 at the Florida Panthers. Draisaitl believes Edmonton will be ready regardless even if the injured players don’t return before the end of the regular season.
“I think the adrenaline will kick in (in playoffs) and every single player knows individually how we want to look as a team, and that’s what’s going to come out first and foremost, it doesn’t matter who you’re on the ice with,” Draisaitl said. “We’ve all played with each other plenty, we all know what the guys are all about, so I’m not too worried about the line combinations and all that stuff, it’s more about our overall game and we can find that.”
Draisaitl would not disclose if his most recent injury is related to the one that forced him out in late March. Even if he is not able to return to play in a regular-season game, the four-time 50-goal scorer believes the Oilers have learned from their previous playoff experience.
“We’ve all played with each other throughout the year,” Draisaitl said. “My linemates have changed throughout the year, so I know what everyone is about. I’ve played with [Kane] plenty if he’s coming in, so I know what he’s about.
“We shouldn’t be too focused on the lines, they switch game after game, that’s not the factor, the factor is that we want to compete and our mindset going into these games and into this [first round] series.”
