McDavid Brings 205-Point Pace To Toronto

Connor McDavid picked up an assist on Wednesday night, November 11, to reach a point in his 20th straight game to open the season, as Zach Hyman scored twice and Evan Bouchard won it 47 seconds into overtime at Rogers Place. The full story of the game itself is in iimiTV’s breaking report on McDavid’s 20-game point streak, published yesterday.

What settled the next day is the size of the number sitting behind the streak. Once the league’s own tracking data and the first full pace breakdowns landed on November 12, the conversation stopped being about 20 games and started being about 200 points.

Connor McDavid 200 Points: The Pace NHL EDGE Measured

The NHL’s EDGE breakdown, published November 12, puts McDavid on pace for 205 points across the 84-game season, a number that would challenge Wayne Gretzky’s single-season record of 215, set in 1985-86. McDavid stands at 49 points in 20 games, with 11 goals and 38 assists, and the tracking data underneath the total is as unusual as the total itself. He leads the entire league in 22-plus mph speed bursts (44), in 20-plus mph bursts (180) and in 18-to-20 mph bursts (261), and he has scored 10 of his 11 goals off the rush. The only other players with more than five rush goals are Tage Thompson, with seven, and Sebastian Aho, with six.

The clearest single play in the file is his goal 50 seconds into the game against the New York Rangers on November 1, his franchise-record eighth opening-minute goal. EDGE measured a speed burst of 22.79 mph on the play, through all three zones, the fastest burst resulting in a goal in the NHL this season. The NHL’s official clip of the goal is the play the data is describing:

The playmaking numbers carry their own records. NHL EDGE records that McDavid became the fastest player in league history to reach 30 assists in a season, doing it in 15 games against Gretzky’s 16 in 1984-85, and the fastest to 12 multipoint games in a season, 17 games, since Peter Forsberg needed the same 17 in 2005-06. He leads the league with 29 primary assists, more than double the next skater, his teammate Leon Draisaitl at 14, and he has factored in on 61.3 percent of Edmonton’s goals, 49 of 80, the highest share for any player this season. The trio around him is historic in its own right: McDavid (49), Draisaitl (37) and Bouchard (33) have combined for 119 points in 20 games, and over the past 38 years the only trio with more through 20 is Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr and Ron Francis, who had 124 for Pittsburgh in 1995-96. Edmonton is also the only team in the league with four players at nine goals or more: Draisaitl (18, the league lead), McDavid and Bouchard (11 each) and Vasily Podkolzin (nine).

The 200-Point Argument Starts In Earnest

The pace drew its first full public debate the same day. ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski opened his November 12 Wysh List by backing the mark outright, then put the question to a panel of analysts who mostly landed the other way. ESPN research producer Vince Masi pointed to availability: McDavid has averaged 75 games a season over the past three years, and 75 games at his current pace lands at 189. Rachel Doerrie projected 170 points, which she noted would still be the highest total since Lemieux in the modern era. NHL Network’s Mike Kelly calculated that McDavid would need 2.34 points per game the rest of the way, against a full-season career high of 1.87, and called 200 unlikely.

Inside the Oilers room, the view is calmer. “Can he do it? Absolutely. Is it a thing that we go around here or that he thinks about? Not really at all,” defenceman Mattias Ekholm told ESPN. Ekholm’s own theory for the extra level is rest: last season’s first-round exit gave McDavid two extra months of recovery after years of long playoff runs, the 4 Nations Face-Off and the Olympics. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, his teammate since he entered the league, put it more simply: “Every time you think that he’s found another level, he finds another level. We’re not putting it past him, that’s for sure.”

McDavid himself keeps deflecting the whole subject toward the team, in the same terms he used this week. “I’m playing with some special players. That helps. Getting some bounces, too,” he said. “When the team is winning games, I’ve been the beneficiary of some great team play.” The Oilers’ own account marked the night Bouchard’s winner landed with a short celebratory post, carried in the AP report of the game, and Wednesday’s finish itself is in the NHL’s official highlights:

What It Means Next In Toronto

Saturday turns the pace into two immediate checkpoints, both of them in Toronto, the city McDavid grew up outside of. One point against the Maple Leafs extends the streak to 21 games and sets his career best outright, past the 20 he has now matched twice. Two assists would take him to 40 assists in 21 games and make him the fastest player in NHL history to that mark as well: NHL EDGE notes Gretzky needed 22 games in 1984-85. The next season-opening name in front of the streak itself is Dany Heatley, whose 22 games in 2005-06 sits one Toronto point and one more game beyond that.

The schedule does not slow down after Saturday. Toronto opens a six-game road trip and starts a back-to-back: Edmonton rematches the Flyers in Philadelphia on Sunday, then continues to Florida, Tampa Bay, Carolina and St. Louis before coming home. The support around the streak is getting healthier at the right end of that trip, with Hyman back and scoring twice on Wednesday and Nugent-Hopkins already returned, and with Tristan Jarry coming off four straight quality starts in net. The streak was the story on Wednesday. By Thursday it had become a pace, a debate and a pair of records waiting in Toronto on Saturday night.