Connor McDavid has a point in every game the Edmonton Oilers have played this season and leads the league by a distance. Paul Bissonnette has decided where that ends up.
“This guy’s just kind of on a different level, and every year he seems to bring it up another notch,” Bissonnette said on Spittin’ Chiclets. “This year he’s on pace right now for over 250 points.”
Then he committed to it.
“I wouldn’t be shocked if he’s able to maintain it and compete with Wayne’s all-time record of 215 points in a regular season,” he said.
McDavid’s point totals this season:
| Through 10 games | Through 15 games | Through 17 games |
|---|---|---|
| 31 | 39 | 44 |
Can Connor McDavid break Wayne Gretzky’s points record?
Wayne Gretzky scored 215 points in 1985-86, with 52 goals and 163 assists, and he remains the only player who has ever cleared 200. Mario Lemieux got to 199 in 1988-89 and nobody else has come near it since.
The pace Bissonnette cited was real when he said it. Through ten games McDavid was tracking at 260 over the NHL’s 84-game schedule, a figure that would have left Gretzky’s record 45 points behind.
It has since drifted. His 44 points in 17 games works out at 2.59 a night, which over a full season projects to roughly 217, meaning he has gone from obliterating the record to sitting right on top of it in the space of a fortnight. That is still a number nobody has reached in forty years.
What makes the conversation serious rather than silly is the company. Only four players in league history have managed 30 points through their first ten games of a season: Gretzky, Lemieux, Mike Bossy and now McDavid. He is also the fastest player ever to 20 assists in a season, and his underlying numbers sit well above his own three-year averages rather than resting on a hot shooting percentage.
The obvious caveat applies. Gretzky played in an era when the league averaged close to eight goals a game, and McDavid is doing this in one where the figure is barely six.
Edmonton are 10-5-2 and McDavid turns 30 in January.
Read more:
