Connor McDavid has a point in every game the Edmonton Oilers have played this season and is on a pace that would obliterate the most famous number in hockey. The projections have been getting louder by the day. Bryan Hayes has heard enough of them.
“Obviously he’s not putting up 215-plus points,” Hayes said on TSN’s OverDrive.
That wasn’t a criticism. The rest of his point was that it doesn’t need to be the measure.
“But he is so good. He is so dominant,” Hayes said, going on to argue that McDavid can build a case for another Hart Trophy without coming anywhere near Wayne Gretzky‘s record.
Can McDavid break Gretzky’s points record?
Gretzky put up 215 points in 80 games in 1985-86, and nobody else in the history of the sport has reached 200 at all. Mario Lemieux came closest with 199 in 1988-89. McDavid’s own career best is 153, set in 2022-23, and only four players have ever cleared that figure: McDavid, Steve Yzerman with 155 in 1989, Lemieux four times and Gretzky nine.
The current rate projects to 242 points over an 84-game schedule, which is where the excitement is coming from. He has also become the fastest player in league history to reach 20 assists in a season, and is the sixth ever to hit 25 points inside his team’s opening 10 games, alongside Lemieux, Mike Bossy, Gretzky, Brent Sutter and Marcel Dionne.
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Hayes isn’t alone in applying the brakes. An analysis at Oilersnation pointed out that Gretzky had just 17 points through his first 10 games in 1981-82 and still finished with 212, which cuts both ways: hot starts aren’t required, and they aren’t predictive either. Their own conclusion was that 200 is unrealistic but 160 is achievable, which would make McDavid only the third player ever to manage it.
Hayes has been willing to take firm positions all autumn. He called the Anaheim decision to pass over Leo Carlsson for the captaincy an act of spite, and has said the Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin debate isn’t a debate at all.
McDavid, for his part, says he hasn’t been paying attention to the totals.
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