Connor McDavid recorded an assist in his 18th straight game on Saturday, November 7, 2026, setting up Mattias Ekholm for the opening goal against the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Place and tying Adam Oates for second on the NHL’s all-time list for consecutive games with an assist.
How to watch: Vancouver Canucks at Edmonton Oilers, Saturday, November 7, 2026, 10 p.m. ET at Rogers Place, Edmonton
TV (Canada): Sportsnet, TVA Sports
Stream: Sportsnet+
Radio: Oilers Radio Network, including 880 CHED
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Connor McDavid Assist Streak Reaches Rare Ground
The milestone arrived in the first period on Hockey Fights Cancer Night in Edmonton. Ekholm scored the first goal of the night with McDavid and Leon Draisaitl drawing the assists, taking McDavid to 45 points on the season, 10 goals and 35 assists in 18 games. Vancouver answered late in the period, Max Sasson tipping in a shot with assists from Jamie Oleksiak and Guillaume Brisebois to send the teams to the intermission tied 1-1, but the record had already been written by then. An assist streak cannot be taken back by a tying goal.
As Sportsnet reported, McDavid moved into a tie with Oates, who put together his 18-game run with the Boston Bruins in 1992-93, for second on the NHL list of most consecutive games with an assist. Only one name remains above him. The streak is also a season-opening run: McDavid has collected at least one assist in every game Edmonton has played this season, which means the longest season-opening assist streak in NHL history keeps growing by one every night he plays.
Only Wayne Gretzky Stands Ahead
Wayne Gretzky owns the all-time record with an assist in 23 consecutive games in 1990-91. That is the whole list now. Gretzky at 23, then McDavid and Oates at 18, and nobody else. McDavid passed the old season-opening mark of 12, shared by Gretzky, Ken Linseman and Sebastian Aho, back on October 28 against Calgary, and he has added five more games to it since.
The assist also extended McDavid’s point streak to 18 games to open the season. As NHL.com set out before the game, one more point would give him the longest season-opening point streak by an active player, moving him past the 17-game starts he produced himself in 2021-22 and William Nylander matched in 2023-24. He needed less than a period to claim it.
The numbers underneath the streak explain why it has lasted this long. McDavid entered the night with 44 points in 17 games, 13 clear of Draisaitl at the top of the NHL scoring race, with Oilers defenceman Evan Bouchard third on 30 points. His 34 assists alone were more than any other player in the league had points. On November 1 at Madison Square Garden he became the fastest player in NHL history to reach 30 assists in a season, doing it in 15 games and taking a mark Gretzky set at 16 games in 1984-85.
Gretzky Is Watching The Chase
The man at the top of the list has already weighed in. Speaking in Toronto on Friday, Gretzky called McDavid’s start “truly remarkable,” as TSN reported, and pointed past the points to the captain’s purpose: “He’s on a mission to win a Stanley Cup, he wants it desperately, and that’s what you need out of your best player and your captain.”
Entering Saturday, McDavid was scoring at a pace of 217 points over Edmonton’s 84-game schedule, two points above the single-season record of 215 Gretzky set in 1985-86. No player other than Gretzky has ever reached 200 points in a season. McDavid’s own career high is 153 points, set in 2022-23, which underlines how far beyond his own standard this opening stretch sits, on a team that arrived at 11-3-3 despite a two-game slide it was trying to stop against a Canucks side that came in at 3-14-1 with four straight losses.
The Road To 23 Runs Through Florida
The chase now has a map. If the streak survives, McDavid can reach 19 against the New York Rangers at Rogers Place on Monday, November 9, then 20 against Philadelphia on November 11, 21 in Toronto on November 14 and 22 in Philadelphia on November 15. Game 23, the one that would tie Gretzky, falls in Florida against the Panthers on November 17. The record itself would be his alone two nights later, on November 19 in Tampa Bay.
Five straight games with an assist is a large ask for any playmaker, and McDavid still has to get through the rest of Saturday night first. But a streak that began on opening night in late September has now carried him past every name in NHL history except one, and the one left is the name this city knows best. The next chapter is Monday at home against the Rangers.
