Draisaitl is chasing the Stanley Cup
The soon-to-be most expensive player in the world is fighting great pain
October 7, 2024, 9:39 p.m
The defeat in the final still hurts, but Leon Draisaitl wants to finally win the Stanley Cup with the Edmonton Oilers. The NHL star feels that the biggest disappointment of his life will only be over when he actually holds the silver trophy in his hands.
Two weddings, an engagement and a big payday: The summer was eventful and enjoyable for Leon Draisaitl, but the pain still hasn’t gone away. “I think that you never really process it,” the German ice hockey star tells the Sport-Information-Service. 106 days after being knocked out in the seventh NHL final, the 28-year-old is making a new attempt at the Stanley Cup with the Edmonton Oilers.
Because Draisaitl still has a job to do: He really wants to become a hero at Wayne Gretzky’s former club – not anywhere else. So he signed the eight-year, $112 million contract that will make him the most expensive hockey player in the world next year and didn’t wait for his opportunity on the open market. “We have now failed three times in a row against the eventual winner,” emphasizes the Cologne native, who starts the season with the Oilers against the Winnipeg Jets on Wednesday, “we are not far away.”
Biggest disappointment of his life
Draisaitl feels that only when he actually holds this shapeless silver cup in his hands will the biggest disappointment of his life be put behind him. “Then you can probably come to terms with it quite well. But until then it will stay with you, possibly for the rest of your life.”
After a roller coaster ride with a catastrophic false start and two long winning streaks, turbulent play-offs, the spectacular equalizer in the final series after three quick defeats and the final knockout, Draisaitl tried everything to change his mind. In July he proposed to his girlfriend Celeste Desjardins in a bay on Mallorca. A little later he was a guest at the wedding of his congenial storm partner Connor McDavid on a private island in Ontario. And in August, his sister Kim married national hockey player Niklas Wellen in Krefeld, whom Draisaitl had previously visited with his fiancée at the Olympic finals in Paris. “I had a lot to do in the short summer,” he says with a laugh.
“When it comes to ice hockey, Canada is the ultimate”
Before getting back on the ice, he reached an agreement with Edmonton a year before his old contract expired to stay long-term until 2033. “It has become our home, the city lives and loves ice hockey,” he says. Moving to Florida, for example to the champion Panthers, away from the enormous pressure in Canada, where fans have been waiting for a Stanley Cup triumph since 1990, was not an issue for him. “Lying on the beach, having a pool in the garden, that’s all nice,” but it’s not the most important thing: “When it comes to ice hockey, Canada is the ultimate, and you can tell by the euphoria of the people.”
And the “Kölsche Jung” has now come to terms with life as a superstar who is recognized and spoken to everywhere. “I know how to deal with it very well,” even if he actually “doesn’t like being the center of attention and making a big deal about who I am or what I’ve accomplished.” From Wednesday everyone will be watching closely again.