Oilers star Draisaitl feels confident: "Our best beats anyone's best"

Edmonton Oilers forward Leon Draisaitl feels that when his team is at their best, no one can get in their way.

Throughout plenty of Draisaitl’s tenure with the Oilers, a big complaint from fans has been the team’s inability to play an entire 60 minutes. That has continued to be the case in this year’s postseason, as they have often come out of the gates flying, only to blow leads later on.

Game 4 of the Western Conference Final was the opposite. They came out slow and found themselves trailing 2-0 five minutes into the first period. After that, they seemed to dial it in and controlled play the rest of the way, resulting in a 5-2 victory. When they are firing on all cylinders like that, Draisaitl believes they are the best team in the NHL.

“I truly believe that our best beats anyone’s best,” Draisaitl told reporters following today’s morning skate. “It’s just a matter of consistently playing that way, and that’s taxing. That’s a hard thing to do, to play at your best every single night, every single shift, that’s really hard to do. I think we’re finding our way a little bit and looking to continue that here tonight.”

While the Oilers’ team play has been inconsistent at times this run, Draisaitl has dominated throughout. The 28-year-old has 10 goals and 28 points through 16 games, which gives him an astounding 103 points in only 65 career playoff outings.

The Oilers will be looking to be the first team in this series to win two in a row, which would give them a 3-2 series lead heading back to Edmonton for Game 6. In order to help them do that, head coach Kris Knoblauch has made a small lineup change, replacing Derek Ryan with Sam Carrick on the fourth line.

Puck drop in Game 5 tonight is set for 6:30 pm MT.

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