BLOG: Draisaitl, Oilers ready to ramp up after taking advantage of longer offseason

EDMONTON, AB – Leon Draisaitl & his Oilers teammates took this offseason for what it was worth as an opportunity to rest, recalibrate and start ramping up their game to take the regular season by storm come puck drop against the Canucks on Sept. 29.

“Maybe this summer came at the right time for us," Draisaitl said after an informal skate at the Downtown Community Arena on Thursday.

Following last year’s first-round exit to the Anaheim Ducks, the German superstar & the rest of the Blue & Orange made the most of their extended summer by using the time to recover physically & mentally from owning the busiest schedule in the NHL over the past three seasons, totalling 300 regular-season and playoff games since 2023-24.

Draisaitl was one of the names on a long list of Oilers’ players who accumulated injuries along the way in 2025-26 after missing the final month of the regular season, finishing with 97 points (35 goals) in 65 regular-season games before returning for the playoffs and recording three goals and seven assists over Edmonton’s six-game defeat.

While the Blue & Orange aren’t keen to blame injuries, the extended summer was a silver lining amid last year’s disappointment, providing the players months instead of weeks to ramp up their training regimens before arriving in Edmonton ahead of next week's Training Camp in good health and ready to hit the ground running.

"I think it's just time, right?" Draisaitl said. "If you have six or seven weeks to get your cardio back up and running, there's just not enough time, really. So when you have four months, you can ramp it up, properly plan out your summer and not kind of just go on the fly as it comes.

"Short summers are a great sign. We want more short summers, but this one might have come at the right time."

What the Oilers hope to take advantage of beyond the physical benefits of a longer summer is the mental reset it provided them to be ready to attack the regular season and ramp up their game to find the right team identity in time for playoffs – something that Draisaitl picked out as a priority for the team in the weeks leading up to puck drop.

After two straight visits to the Stanley Cup Final, shorter offseasons in 2025 & 2026 led to slow starts for the Oilers and less emphasis on the regular season, which Draisaitl & his teammates hope to reverse right from the get-go this campaign under the new leadership of Head Coach Mike Babcock.

"I think we just have to understand that this is where you build your game for [Game 85] and on, right?" Draisaitl said. "These winning environments and these winning streaks and exactly knowing what the perfect game for you as a team looks like. You have to create that over the regular season, and I don't think we did that at all last season.  I don't think that we ever really figured out what our A-game really was, and on top of that, we weren't able to sustain it."