50 goals in 50 games: Can Leon Draisaitl do it?
Leon Draisaitl (Mark J. Rebilas-USA Sports TODAY)
“Don’t sleep with Leon,” Zach Hyman joked. “He’s also pretty good.”
Hyman popped the question at the NHL Player Media Tour in September, answering my question about how excited he was to be joining the Edmonton Oilers and potentially playing with Connor McDavid. Verbal comments are weird.
Not that Draisaitl qualifies as a forgotten star. He’s an Art Ross Trophy winner, a Hart Trophy winner, and he’s second among all players in goals and points over the past five seasons. However, with McDavid playing at a level not seen since Mario Lemieux in the mid-1990s, is there any case that Draisaitl is… underrated? Or at least not properly. How feverish would the hockey world be if McDavid or Auston Matthews were the ones following 50 goals in 50 games?
In fact, ’50 in 50′ doesn’t even do Draisaitl’s justice. He is currently on pace to hit the #50 goal in game #48. That would make him the third fastest of the regular members of the ’50 in 50′ club. Wayne Gretzky, a three-time member, did it in games 39, 42 and 50. Lemieux did it in 46. Unofficially, Cam Neely scored 50 goals in 44 games, retired through injury in 1993. -94, while Alexander Mogilny scored 50 goals in 46 non-consecutive games during the 76-goal campaign of 1992-93.
So can Draisaitl become the first official 50 in 50 since Brett Hull in 1991-92 and/or the first unofficial 50 in 50 since Neely in 94? Draisaitl is already 40% there, so it’s a matter of predicting how long it will take him to get his next 30 goals. Perhaps something in his basic numbers could serve as a prediction.
We can also start from the most obvious place to look when someone starts scoring: scoring rate. Draisaitl is currently at a hilariously unsustainable 29.9. As for the angle of view: if it stays that high, it will be the highest shooting rate since Sergei Makarov in 1990-91 and the sixth highest in NHL history. Taking into account the progress and expansion of the goalkeepers, we might not officially call 29.9 the highest ever, for all time, if Draisaitl managed to do it in a whole season. . So yeah, not as sustainable as heck. That said, Draisaitl To be an extremely accurate shooter for his career. At 17.8%, he has the highest career shooting rate of the 469 active NHLers with at least 200 games played. So for the sake of the 50 in 50 workout, predict Draisaitl converting shots to his career rate for the rest of the season.
How about his shot rate at all strengths? This season, it hit an all-time high of 9,178 out of 60. While the quality of his scoring opportunities is in line with his career averages, his staggering numbers have giving him a career-best 1.37 projected goals every 60, according to naturalstattrick.com. However, to keep our prediction conservative, let’s assume he “drops” to his career firing rate of 7,418 per 60 minutes at all strengths.
So we have Draisaitl shooting puck 7,418 times per 60 and scoring on 17.8 percent of his shots. How much will he play for the rest of the season? He has averaged 22:30 per game since Dave Tippett took over as Oilers coach for the 2019-20 season.
If Draisaitl shoots and scores at his professional standard rate (with exact numbers in calculations, not rounded for readability) and plays average ice time as his coach Tippett , we get a very conservative estimate of 0.494 goals per game. rest of the season – cautious as those numbers affect his modest stats for his first few seasons. Based on that goal percentage, Draisaitl will score 31 goals in his next 63 games and end the season with 51. That sounds like a floor forecast, though.
What if we adjusted the career averages to reflect the ‘current Draisaitl,’ superstar version? If we discount this season due to the small sample size but using his previous three seasons, we get 7,876 hits per 60 with a 20.1 percent success rate. Apply ‘TOI Tippett’ 22:30 and it predicts 0.594 goals per game, good for another 37 goals in his next 63 games. So if we take the ‘God Draisaitl’ of the 2021-22 season so far and combine him with the ‘Superstar Draisaitl of the last three seasons’ for Edmonton’s remaining 63 games, he’ll hit 50NS target at the 69-game mark.
Does this math offer anything remotely close to an exact science? Obviously not. It is only a matter of showing what a conservative estimate would produce. If Draisaitl shows his “unique” superstar selves from Game 21 on, he’ll have a hard time scoring 50 goals in 50 games.
If we accept that he has reached a new level of production despite the comparison with his previous seasons, we can dare to dream of him scoring 50 goals in 50 games. .
https://thehockeynews.com/news/50-goals-in-50-games-can-leon-draisaitl-do-it 50 goals in 50 games: Can Leon Draisaitl do it?
