Leon Draisaitl is having a season. He is clearly the best player on a team that includes Connor McDavid. He is a man on a mission to take this team to the promise land and finally hoist the Stanley Cup. Until then, he is chasing down some regular season awards and scoring titles for consolation prizes. He will basically be in the running for every single award that forwards can win (some may argue for good fun he should get Norris and Vezina votes too) and is currently the leader in one of those races: the Rocket Richard Trophy as the league’s leading goal scorer.
Surprising as it may be to some, Draisail has never won the Rocket Richard. He came close, one season, back in 2018–19. Draisaitl finished the season with 50 goals, one shy of Alex Ovechkin‘s 51. What some of us may remember is the fateful play where Calgary Flames defender Rasmus Andersson knocked down a long-range empty net attempt from Draisaitl near the end of the final game of the season that could have (and we prefer to think would have) tied him for the league lead.
We’re past that, now. Mostly. And in 2024–25, Draisaitl has another shot at the Rocket Richard. Through the first 49 games the Edmonton Oilers have played, he has scored 35 goals and currently leads the league by seven over Sam Reinhart and William Nylander, who have 28 apiece.
He has a real shot at winning the Rocket Richard, but with how many goals will Draisaitl finish the season with? We took to X this week to ask the fans how many goals Leon Draisaitl will score in the 2024–25 season.
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Leon Draisaitl currently leads the league with 35 goals. How many goals do you think he’ll finish the season with?#LetsGoOilers
— The Oil Rig (@oilrigEDM) January 25, 2025
Something not good has happened for this outcome
Draisaitl has 35 goals in 49 games. He is on pace to finish well beyond the 45–50 goal range, but 3.7% of voters suggest this may happen, coming in last in this week’s poll. And if it does, it likely means something really bad has happened to him. Injury, massive slump, team regression, the possibilities do exist for an extremely slow finish to the season.
In 33 games, Draisaitl would have to score between 10 to 15 goals for this to happen. Well below his season rate to this point, this outcome would assume he drops to scoring scoring at a 25- to 37-goal pace over a full season. He has not scored at this slow a pace since 2016–17.
One possible way for this to happen is if Draisaitl’s shooting percentage drops off. Currently, he has a 23.2% shooting percentage. The highest of his career and well above his career average of 18.6%. If he hits a slump at the wrong time (which for him is any time), maybe his goal scoring drops off to this level.
He might drop off a bit, and this jeopardizes his award potential
Given where he is at right now, Draisaitl should hit 50 goals on the season. This would be his fourth 50-goal season. And 30.3% of voters think he will just get to this milestone and finish with between 51 and 55 goals by season’s end, finishing second in this week’s poll.
If he scores 16 to 20 goals in the remaining 33 games, Draisaitl will achieve this mark. Given his current pace, this would mean that he has slowed down a bit in the final stretch of the season. Perhaps to conserve energy for the playoff run?
Considering Draisaitl is shooting at such a high percentage right now, this outcome seems incredibly likely if he regresses back to his recent year’s shooting percentages. The unfortunate part, however, is that it does jeopardize his candidacy for the Rocket Richard Trophy. In recent years, it has required someone score or be on a 60-goal pace.
Draisaitl will stay the course
Winning this week’s poll with 46.8% of the vote is a season goal total between 56 and 60. This is where Draisaitl will end the season if he continues scoring at exactly the same pace he has thus far. With 35 goals in 49 games, that projects to be about 58 goals over a full 82-game season.
If Draisaitl hits this goal range, it will be a career-high. His previous best is 55 goals in the 2021–22 season. Given the scoring pace of his closest competitors, this would also leave him as the favourite to win the Rocket Richard for the first time in his career.
The good season will get even… gooder?
Some of us Oilers fans are optimists. Even when Draisaitl is performing at the highest level of his career, he could be doing even more. This week, nearly one fifth of voters, 19.3%, think that he will end the season with over 60 goals. Hitting that mark for the first time in his career and likely becoming the fourth inOilers history and 44th in NHL history to do so.
And oddly enough, this is not even unreasonable to suggest. As mentioned before, Draisaitl at his current pace would be ending the season around 58 goals. Reflecting back on the season so far, there were easily another five situations where he missed a wide open net that should have gone in, including an empty netter against the Buffalo Sabres just yesterday afternoon.
All it would take is a couple of those to go his way for Draisaitl to score 60 goals in a single season. And this would almost certainly give him the Rocket Richard Trophy for the first time in his career.
How many goals do you think Draisaitl will finish the season with? Drop a comment down below!
Photo by Curtis Comeau/Icon Sportswire
