On McDavid, milestones and memories

Reminders were served in multiple ways on Tuesday night, when Connor McDavid hit a number of different milestones in one magical performance that brought back distant but welcome memories of Wayne Gretzky. The Great One used to deliver records, often unrelated to one another, in bunches: e.g. that time in Buffalo he broke Phil Esposito’s single season goal record with a late-third-period hat trick that also closed out his fourth consecutive game of 5 points; or that night in the old Calgary Corral he became the first NHLer to score 200 points in a season in the first period, then set an unrelated record for fastest 2 shorthanded goals in the second. The second of those was his 90th goal of the season.

McDavid’s recent feats were not quite so audacious, but highly impressive all the same. Call them what you will — records, milestones, marks, curios — but I counted no fewer than 4 of them from that last game alone, 3 individual and 1 franchise mark. Before detailing them, let’s take a moment to appreciate how #97 went about his business against the Flyers:

1. A breathtaking 2-on-2 rush that ended with #97 skating backwards across the face of goal with a fallen defender in his wake, then firing a magic bullet that somehow rattled its way through a tiny chink in Carter Hart’s armour.
2. A ridiculous behind-the-back feed to Zach Hyman who walked in alone for the deke and deposit.
3. A perfectly-timed flyby of the goalmouth to take Hyman’s centring pass and deftly one-touch it over to Ryan Nugent-Hopkins for the easy finish.
4. A circle of the o-zone at speed to open up a passing lane, then send a perfectly-weighted pass through it for Leon Draisaitl to lash home from the high slot.
5. A brief burst on goal to occupy the goalie, then a saucer pass over the d-man’s stick and flat on to that of RNH for another deft finish.

The goals came in different manpower situations: the first and last on his regular line with RNH and Hyman; the second on a post-penalty-kill shift with Draisaitl and Hyman; the third on the powerplay with all of the above; and the fourth a delayed penalty when McD himself hopped over the boards as the sixth attacker to join the Draisaitl unit and ultimately engineer the scoring play. A goal, 4 primary assists, all beauties.

So what about those milestones, marks and curios?

1. 900 career points

Another century milestone, McDavid’s third in the past 2 seasons. Not a particularly round number, but another chance to compare McDavid’s timetable to the past greats of the game.

The league hailed McD as the fifth fastest in NHL history to get to 900, and he stands out as the only player from the current century on the list. As is customary with many NHL scoring records, there’s Gretzky at the top in a league of his own, followed by Mario Lemieux in a second league of one, followed then by your garden variety immortals in League Three (Mike Bossy and Peter Stastny in the tier just ahead of McDavid, who is followed by yet a third Oiler, the wonderful Jari Kurri). Other than McDavid himself, all of these guys played most or all of hockey’s highest scoring decade, the 1980s, with the lone exception of the fabulous Bobby Orr who played on the highest-scoring club of the 1970s.

2. Career average of 1.5 points per game

In the best Gretzky tradition, McDavid didn’t stop scoring once he reached the new milestone. The 5 points he racked up vs. the Flyers raised his career total to 903, exactly 1.5x his 602 career games played.

This marks the very first time in his tenure that McDavid can lay claim to a career average of fully a point and a half per game, though he’s been tending in that direction for quite a long time:

The season totals show McDavid’s production rates increasing every year of his first 6, finally passing through the 1.5 threshold (orange background) in Year 5 and remaining there since. His career averages have risen, albeit more slowly by the nature of the calculation, every single year right to the present. He nearly made it to 1.5 by the end of his fabulous 2022-23 campaign, then his injury-slowed start this past fall delayed the inevitable. Now it’s here, and still apparently rising, though obviously this particular stat is a volatile one from game to game.

For now at least, he’s also just passed the great Mike Bossy for fourth on the all-time list. This one’s a doozy:

• Source: nhl.com

I set the filters low at just 100 career points to make room for a couple of the league’s earliest legends. Both Newsy Lalone and Joe Malone were already around McDavid’s current age when the NHL was formed in 1917, and seasons were short. Lalonde in particular shows well here, but even he can’t overcome the 1. Gretzky 2. Lemieux standard of excellence. Behind Newsy comes our man Connor, who has just nosed past Bossy, who is is rounded up from 1.497.

Every name on this list is a hockey icon, even as the 1980s era still dominates with 5 of the 10. All the data is slanted by the various eras of the game, and McDavid is swimming against the current a bit. Which makes his high ranking all the more impressive.

Crosby just slides into tenth spot, nearly a quarter-point behind McDavid but nonetheless the closest of active players. Sorting out just current players, a familiar name settles behind Crosby at #3:  

• Source

This is the more relevant list, an apples-to-apples comparison of men facing the same goaltenders and checkers and coaching schemes. Again I’ve left the filter low so as not to exclude newer players like Kirill Kaprizov and Jason Robertson, and show it down to #12 out of respect for the greatest goal scorer of the current century.

This list resembles a typical Gretzky scoring “race”, where #1 has a bigger lead on #2 than #2 does on #17 (Patrick Kane, 1.05). Except this time it’s not Gretzky atop the page, but McDavid. Stands to reason, given Connor has won 5 of the 8 scoring races since he entered the league and hasn’t finished lower than #2 since his injury-interrupted rookie campaign.

Simply put, he is the best scorer of his generation, something the reader knew already. This is just another way to scale the same indisputable fact.

3. Tenth career 5-point game

The measure of “big games” like hat tricks or 5-point games puts offensive production in a different lens, but the same bright lights should shine through. We certainly see it on this list, starting this time with the active players.

• Source: statmuse.com

Lots of Art Ross Trophies on that list, especially near the top. McDavid was already #1 before Tuesday night’s gem, but now he’s the only active player in the double digits.It also makes him the only current NHLer in the top 20 all-time.

• Source

On this list we see nothing but Expansion Era players, playing longer seasons in more wide-open times. The top of this list is startling indeed, not by its names but by their numbers. Gretzky posted an incredible 96 such games, Lemieux a staggering 51. Nobody else ever made it to 20!

McDavid is currently tied with Orr and Joe Sakic, not bad players in their own time. One more such outburst will move him up to the level of Guy Lafleur and Bobby Hull, also pretty decent hockeyists. There are no Average Joes on this list despite its stochastic nature. An ordinary player like Warren Foegele might just do it on a career night where everything breaks right, but only the greatest of scorers can do so repeatedly.

With all of the other numbers here written in permanent ink, McDavid can only slide up the list, at least until some new phenom starts nipping at his heels. He has a decent chance to reach #4, possibly even pass the prolific Phil Esposito at #3.

The top 2 are off limits until some imaginary future where hockey adopts another basketball standard and makes goaltending illegal. This is where the artifice of the method is exposed, and era effects rule the day. Most of the players shown here played their entire careers in the second half of the 20th Century, with a couple like Steve Yzerman and Joe Sakic surviving into the early years of the 21st. McDavid stamds alone as the only modern representative.

4. Oilers’ 150th 5-point game

It seems appropriate that their captain would be the individual to pull the Oilers to a franchise milestone in the same category. His tenth 5-point game happened to be the club’s 150th, the most of any NHL franchise.

This research is all mine, so I’ll dispense with the graphics and simply provide raw numbers:

1. Edmonton 150
2. Montreal 133
3. Pittsburgh 122
4. Boston 119
5. Toronto 107
6. Chicago 99
7. Detroit 95

Edmonton (1979-2024) passed the storied Montreal Canadiens (1917-2024) some time ago, and with the recent feats of McDavid, Draisaitl and even Foegele, are pulling away. The Penguins (1967-2024) have also surged ahead of many of the Original Six clubs thanks to their own two generations of multiple elite scorers.

The distribution of 5-point games among Oilers is another eye-popper, even as you can likely guess what’s coming:

1. Gretzky 79 (!!)
2. Kurri 14
3. Coffey 10
4. (T-3) McDavid 10
5. Anderson 6
6. (T-5) Draisaitl 6
7. Messier 3
8. (T-7) Lumley 3
9. Tikkanen 2
10. (T-9) Nugent-Hopkins 2
11. 15 others 1

Gretzky had more 5-point games in 1983-84 alone (15) than any other Oiler accumulated during his entire time here. #99’s ability to produce bouquets of points is simply unmatched in the history of the sport. Especially during his time in Edmonton, which represented the perfect storm of teammates, coach, open style of play and very high league averages spurred by the Great One himself. Many clubs tried to emulate the Oilers’ offensive ways before league coaching, and goaltending, took major steps towards shutting things down in the ’90s and beyond.

These days offence is once again on the rise, with another Oiler leading the charge. But consider that during the 9 years that Gretzky wore orange and blue, NHL teams produced at a rate of 3.82 goals per game. During McDavid’s own 9 years here? 2.99 goals per game, a reduction of 22%. The threshold of a 5-point game is significantly tougher to achieve in modern times.

What does it all mean? Great as he is, Connor McDavid will never dominate Edmonton’s franchise record book, nor that of the NHL. Both are the personal property of one W. Gretzky, who as an NHL Oiler won 7 straight scoring titles by an average of 67 points! A large number of his scoring feats are as untouchable as Glenn Hall’s endurance records or Ty Cobb’s career batting average.

But when McDavid as an offensive player is compared to (would-be) peers from his own era, he shines like a diamond.

We Oilers fans are incredibly fortunate to have had either one of them on our team, never mind both.