Connor McDavid has 23 points in eight games for the Edmonton Oilers, the most by any player through that many games since 2000, and the arithmetic has started to get silly. Elliotte Friedman decided to lean into it on 32 Thoughts.
“The most points in a season in the cap era is McDavid, 153,” Friedman said. “I think he’s going to beat that this year.”
Then he was asked whether 200 was on the table.
Kyle Bukauskas ran the numbers first, pointing out that Wayne Gretzky managed it four times and that it amounts to averaging about two and a half points a game across an entire season.
“The record is 215,” Bukauskas said. “If there’s any guy in the league right now that can do it, that’s where I’m putting my money.”
Friedman didn’t hedge either.
“Mario Lemieux just missed it. He got to 199,” he said. “I want to say yes, just for the hell of it. I don’t care if I’m wrong. I want to say he can do it.”
Who has scored 200 points in a season?
Gretzky topped out at 215 in 1985-86, with 52 goals and 163 assists, and cleared 200 on three other occasions. Lemieux came closest to joining him with 199 in 1988-89. In the 37 years since, nobody else has got there, and the highest anyone has managed is McDavid’s own 153 from 2022-23, which remains the last 150-point season in the league.
There’s one number that makes Friedman’s position less absurd than it sounds. Gretzky’s 215-point campaign started marginally slower than this one. Through the same number of games he had one fewer goal and two fewer assists than McDavid has right now.
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The captain is averaging 2.8 points per game, which over an 84-game season projects to roughly 242. He also tied Gretzky’s franchise record for points through eight games, and is the fastest player to 15 assists in a season since Gretzky in 1986.
The betting markets are rather less romantic about it, pricing 200 points at around 10/1, or roughly a nine percent chance.
McDavid, predictably, isn’t engaging with any of it. He says he hasn’t been paying attention to the totals, and has spent most of his media availability talking about how much he’s enjoying playing alongside Leon Draisaitl, who was supposed to center his own line this season and has instead spent the 6-1-1 start on the captain’s wing.
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