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WWYDW(TE): Should the Oilers keep Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl together?
Photo credit: Geoff Burke-Imagn Images
By baggedmilk
Sep 3, 2026, 14:00 EDT
Welcome, dearest Internet friends, to another What Would You Do Wednesday (Thursday Edition), the article where I throw an Oilers-related question at you fine folks and see what kind of solutions you can come up with to fix the problem. This week, I want to ask everyone about Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl playing together because Stan Bowman was on Oilers Now with Bob Stauffer this past week and made it sound like the idea is very much on the table.
Since the dawn of time, playing McDavid and Draisaitl together has always been the Oilers’ break-glass-in-case-of-emergency move. Every coach has said they want balance, every coach talks about spreading the offence out, and every coach eventually ends up with the Dynamic Duo riding together when the Oilers need a goal or the rest of the lineup isn’t doing squat. It’s hard to argue with the move because it usually works, but it is funny/annoying how often the emergency glass gets broken for a team that keeps saying it needs other guys to step up.
And this conversation is never going to go away until the Oilers’ depth can actually come through as needed. On one hand, putting McDrai together gives the Oilers a line that can take over games by itself. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure that out. On the other hand, a lot of us would prefer them playing apart because the team looks/feels deeper and better balanced when the other team has to deal with either of them on almost every shift. The concern, at least from my side of the laptop screen, is whether loading 97 & 29 up on the first line from Jump Street leaves the rest of the squad with enough offence to survive, or whether we’re just setting ourselves up for another year where one line has to do basically everything.
Thinking about those two being together or apart is what made Stan Bowman’s answer to Stauffer so interesting. Bob asked whether it might be easier if McDavid and Draisaitl played together, whether there could be benefits for Connor in terms of playing with a guy as good as Leon, and whether it could help balance the minutes for everyone else.
“Yeah, we’ve talked about this so much internally. I mean, there’s probably not a right answer. I do think there’s probably more good arguments for them playing together, actually, because the biggest challenge we’ve had the last few years has been the no depth. I don’t think anyone would argue with the fact that we haven’t had enough depth, but the explanation as to why we don’t have enough depth. And I think you can say you just need better players. The argument I would say is it’s not so much that as it is for (other) players to play an important role. That has been very, very challenging. Some of the guys that have left to go elsewhere and succeeded. So, it wasn’t that they were bad players or we didn’t want them. It’s that there’s not much rope for those players when the minutes are so low. When you have Connor and Leon both playing, I think they were both in the top five or six in even strength minutes played, and they were on different lines.”
I get what he’s saying. If McDavid and Draisaitl are split up but both are still playing massive minutes at even strength, then the rest of the forwards may not have much room to help the cause. We’ve seen players leave Edmonton and find more opportunity elsewhere, and while that doesn’t mean the Oilers made a mistake with all of them, it does make me wonder whether some guys never had enough rope here to show what they could actually do. Bowman is apparently wondering the same thing, but does the angle that playing Connor and Leon together would actually create more useful minutes for everyone else make sense?
The biggest problem with this plan is what happens at 2C if McDavid and Draisaitl are strapped together. The obvious answer is Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and as much as I love Nuge, we also know what he is at this point in his career. He helps everywhere, he can play with anyone, and there is a reason every coach trusts him, but my man has never been a big 5-on-5 offensive producer. That’s not me slandering my boy. That’s just being real. If the Oilers are asking Nuge to centre the second line while Connor and Leon load up the first, then the wingers around him better be able to help push things along.
That’s where the depth question matters more than the idea itself. I don’t think anyone needs convincing that McDavid and Draisaitl work together. We’ve seen it a thousand times, and the results are magical. The real question is whether the Oilers have enough behind them to make that setup work over a full season. Does Matt Savoie take a step forward after he gets back from injury? Can Trent Frederic bounce back and become somewhat useful? Is Zach Hyman the automatic third leg of the tripod on the loaded line, or does moving him somewhere else help this depth problem? There are a lot of moving parts here, and I don’t think you can answer the McDavid-Draisaitl question without answering what the rest of the top nine looks like.
Would you keep McDavid and Draisaitl together?
If you were Mike Babcock and Co., would you start the season with McDavid and Draisaitl together on the same line, or would you keep that as a nuclear deterrent for when the Oilers need a push? Would you trust RNH as the 2C in this hypothetical setup, or does the lack of five-on-five offence make you nervous? Is the forward group deep enough to support a big-boy line, or are we right back to asking one group to drag the rest of the group uphill?
That’s what I want to know from you. I don’t think there’s a perfect answer, and Bowman basically said as much. Splitting Connor and Leon up feels like a logical way to build balance, but there is at least an argument that putting them together could help the rest of the forwards find more consistent minutes and clearer roles. I’m not sure I’m sold on that logic, but I’m more curious about it than I thought I’d be. So, what would you do? Are you loading up McDavid and Draisaitl from Game 1, keeping them apart until the Oilers need a spark, or trying something in the middle until the roster tells us what it can handle?
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