Edmonton Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl expected to miss rest of regular season due to injury

The Edmonton Oilers say forward Leon Draisaitl is expected to miss the remainder of the regular season due to injury.

Draisaitl was forced to leave Sunday’s game against the Nashville Predators with a lower-body injury.

The star centre took a hit from Predators forward Ozzy Wiesblatt along the boards and went directly to the bench and down the tunnel with a noticeable limp in the first period. He returned and played a few shifts at the end of the first, before not coming out for the second.

“He didn’t feel right, he went off,” Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch said after the game. “He got checked out, felt like he could play on it, and the medical staff looked at him. They were comfortable with him trying it out, (but) he went out and he just didn’t feel quite right.”

The following day, Knoblauch’s assessment appeared to suggest Draisaitl would not be out long. “Not sure if it’s one, two (games), or how long it’s going to be… I don’t have much information right now,” the coach said.

“The fact the medical staff said, ‘It doesn’t seem too bad and there’s no immediate red flags,’ tells me that it shouldn’t be a really long injury. There might be some time off, but we’ll find out later.”

Now the German superstar is expected to miss Edmonton’s remaining 14 regular-season games.

Draisaitl got off to a hot start in the game against Nashville — also his bobblehead night at Rogers Place — scoring his 35th goal of the season on an early power play. He had played just 1:39 before being forced to leave.

The goal lifted him forward to 97 points– fourth best in the NHL — in 65 games on the season.

The Oilers currently sit in the third in the Pacific Division, four points up on the first team outside the wild-card spots.