Leon Draisaitl
Leon Draisaitl
Leon travelled from the World Championships to Toronto for the NHL Combine being held from May 26 to 31, 2014. He weighed in at 92.5 kilograms (204 pounds) and was 187 centimetres (6' 2") in height. He didn’t crack the top 10 in any of the physical contests, and he also wasn’t sure how he fared in the interviews with the general managers. They’d asked a lot of questions, including, “Would you rather be a pilot, a doctor or a sharpshooter?” Was that a trick question? Leon answered “doctor.”
The 52nd NHL Entry Draft was a live event, held on June 27 and 28 at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Unlike the Import Draft, it was a huge in-person event. Leon needed to buy a suit! Dressed in a black jacket, checkered tie, and a crisp white shirt, he waited in the stands with his parents,
Leon Draisaitl is the seventh title in the “Amazing Hockey Stories” series, the previous books being Connor McDavid (www.cmreviews.ca/node/1605), Hayley Wickenheiser (www.cmreviews.ca/node/184), P. K. Subban (www.cmreviews.ca/node/1293), Mitch Marner (www.cmreviews.ca/node/2299), Alex Ovechkin (www.cmreviews.ca/node/2603) and Kerry Price (www.cmreviews.ca/node/3132), and it is the first to highlight a second player from the same NHL team, that team being the Edmonton Oilers.
A quick read, Leon Draisaitl is essentially organized chronologically. Lorna Schultz Nicholson, however, opens the book with a chapter titled “One-Percent Wonder” which points out that the odds were very much against a German-born and raised hockey player ever becoming part of the National Hockey League. The hockey biography then returns to Draisaitl’s “Early Years” in Germany where Draisaitl, the son of a three-time member of the Winter Olympics German National Hockey Team, initially developed his skills as a player. Like skilled Canadian youth who have to move away from home to hone their hockey abilities, Draisaitl, at just age 13 left his home community of Cologne to join the Mannheim Young Eagles. Another physical move, this one major, occurred as a result of the 2012 CHL Import Draft when Draisaitl, then 16, was selected second by the WHL’s Prince Albert Raiders, and he moved to Saskatchewan where “Leon learned English by watching television, movies and YouTube.” The remainder of the book focuses on Draisaitl’s time in the Western Hockey League and his making and playing for the Edmonton Oilers. The book concludes with the 2022 Battle of Alberta when the Edmonton Oilers met the Calgary Flames to decide who would meet the Colorado Avalanche in the conference finals of the Stanley Cup.
Like the other offerings in the series, Leon Draisaitl contains four multi-page graphic novel-like sections created by illustrator D. A. Bishop. These are interspersed and chronologically integrated among the text chapters with the first featuring Draisaitl’s participation in the 2014 Oilers Training Camp after being selected third in the first round of the 52nd NHL Entry Draft; the second graphic section features Draisaitl’s play in the 2015 Memorial Cup as a member of the Kelowna Rockets and his winning the Stafford Smythe Memorial Trophy as the tournament’s MVP; the third his scoring a hat trick in game five of the second round of the 2017 Stanley Cup playoffs, and the last highlighting Draisaitl’s play while injured during the 2022 Stanley Cup quarter finals.
The reader-friendly text is augmented by numerous captioned, full-colour action photos of Draisaitl at various points in his hockey career. Many of the text pages also contain paired speech bubbles, with one containing a question and the other the answer, such as:
What does Leon call his stick?
The Burger Flipper!
That Leon Draisaitl is one of the Edmonton Oilers’ star centres and is under contract with that team until the 2025-26 season should make this title a favorite read of young hockey fans.
Dave Jenkinson, CM’s editor, lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.