I call them Drai defenders.. some take it as their duty respond to any criticism against Drai in GDTs.
It's okay to have superfans and Drai has a few here.. Congrats to the big man for yet another 30G season... 6th in a row and hopefully many more to come.
Does Draisaitl not deserve to be defended?
We're talking about a guy pacing for his 6th 100 point season while making 8 million bucks. The following players have this many 100 point seasons - Crosby has 6, Malkin 3, MacKinnon has 1, Matthews has 1...
He's basically second to McDavid in scoring across McDavid's career.
Meanwhile, he's having an off season this far, but he's improved his defensive metrics substantially. He's improved his margin of scoring chances by substantial amounts by decreasing the amount of chances against significantly while maintaining the number of chances he does get at an exceptional level.
Data pulled from;
Leon Draisaitl - Summary - Natural Stat Trick
Does that look like a player that's been "lazy defensively" or "not committed to winning" or whatever the latest anti Draisaitl narrative is?
Basically the only reason his season hasn't been his best ever from an analytical perspective is his teams high danger save percentage is atrocious and he's been relatively snake bitten. He's generating just as many chances as ever while allowing less.