{"id":277919,"date":"2026-04-21T03:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T03:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/277919\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T03:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T03:32:11","slug":"leon-draisaitl-returns-to-edmonton-oilers-lineup-for-playoff-opener-against-anaheim-ducks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/277919\/","title":{"rendered":"Leon Draisaitl returns to Edmonton Oilers\u2019 lineup for playoff opener against Anaheim Ducks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) \u2014 The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/team-page\/edmonton-oilers\/22\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/team-page\/edmonton-oilers\/22\" target=\"_blank\">Edmonton Oilers<\/a> got a boost in Monday\u2019s opener of their first-round playoff series against the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/team-page\/anaheim-ducks\/24\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/team-page\/anaheim-ducks\/24\" target=\"_blank\">Anaheim Ducks<\/a> with the return of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/player\/leon-draisaitl\/8477934\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/player\/leon-draisaitl\/8477934\" target=\"_blank\">Leon Draisaitl<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Draisaitl missed the final 14 games of the regular season with a knee injury.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The German star was activated from the long-term injured list before Monday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Draisaitl skated with the team over the past week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch predicted the forward would return some time during the first round, but had been coy about when.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cNow that it\u2019s playoffs, it\u2019s a little more sacred about what our lineups are going to be,\u201d Knoblauch said Monday morning. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to announce who\u2019s playing and what our lines are going to be exactly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Draisaitl has compiled 141 points in 96 career playoff games.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Edmonton went 8-4-2 without Draisaitl to close out the season in second place in the Pacific Division and get home-ice advantage for their series with Anaheim.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Draisaitl added 35 goals and 62 assists in 65 games this season, just missing a fifth straight 100-point campaign.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">___<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">AP NHL playoffs: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/stanley-cup and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) \u2014 The Edmonton Oilers got a boost in Monday\u2019s opener of their first-round playoff series&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,127],"class_list":["post-277919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}