Hello, today I will blog about who is better, Leon Draisaitl or Connor McDavid (This season only, I’m not taking into account other seasons)
I will be judging off of 6 different things, Shots, stickhandling, skating, physicality, defense, and Hockey IQ.
First up is shots.
Leon Draisaitl has the advantage here. This is Draisaitl’s best area in my opinion. Sometimes McDavid shows off his nice wrister with a quick one but Draisaitl knows how to use his stick and he can score from any angle. He is great at getting open so he can get a pass and once he gets ready to shoot, he scores a lot of the time. McDavid’s goals might make you think he is a good shooter, but McDavid likes to flick it top shelf in the close quarters. Draisaitl wins this one by a lot.
Stickhandling:
Both McDavid and Draisaitl are good stickhandlers, but it isn’t if you can do the moves, it’s who can pull them off faster and while doing it faster. McDavid has the edge here. Draisaitl’s tendency is to shoot the puck and McDavid is better at pulling off quick movements to leave the opposition flatfooted. McDavid even does it all at such a high speed. In my opinion, McDavid is the best stickhandler in the NHL because he does what Patrick Kane does but at a higher speed. So McDavid takes the cake in this one.
Skating:
The final category of today is skating. Obviously McDavid wins this one. Skating is his bread and butter. He is the fastest skater in the NHL and also has great edge and crossovers that get him around the defense. If McDavid didn’t have his skating ability, he would not be even near as good a player because he couldn’t get in close as easy. Draisaitl is an okay skater but he relies more on just getting to an open place anywhere in the zone and shooting it rather than skating in, although he can do it too. So for this category, McDavid wins in a landslide.
So far it is 2-1 for McDavid with three categories left. Come back soon to see who wins!
Here’s a link to the NHL website.
Here is also a link to an interesting video that goes more in-depth on this.