Can Connor McDavid win the Rocket Richard?

Auston Matthews may be the odds-on favorite to win the Rocket Richard Trophy for most goals in a season, even with just two goals in eight games, but Connor McDavid is making it known that he wants to try for it.

Despite the insane point totals that McDavid has put up throughout his career, he has yet to hit the 50-goal mark in a season, with his career high coming last year at 44. He’s off to a red-hot start in the goal department with eight goals in eight games after his second hat trick of the season against the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday.

With this hot start, Tyler Yaremchuk and Mike McKenna decided to discuss if McDavid could win the Rocket Richard trophy this season.

Mike McKenna: “I think it’s a long shot. I mean, he’s never gone over 44 goals in a season. The thing about it is though that McDavid’s always striving to be better, and it’s not just offensively; it’s defensively as well. I just think it’s a stretch. I actually have Leon Draisaitl picked for the Rocket Richard this year, and he’s got four goals on the season.

I think with McDavid, it just seems to come in bunches, and that’s why it’s so noticeable with him. He’ll rattle off two-goal games, three-goal games. His total point projection is through the roof, because he never misses a game it feels like without being on the scoresheet. But the actual goal-scoring aspect, so much of it for McDavid is downhill driving towards the net, and you just don’t get as many of those opportunities as you could. Like with Draisaitl, on and off the blade, on the power play.

It could happen, if there’s slumps across the league, if guys like Matthews or [Kirill] Kaprizov or [Alex] Ovechkin or [Chris] Kreider, these top names, if they don’t really catch fire, maybe we’re looking at 50-52 is leading the NHL. I could see that, but I think it’s going to be tough for McDavid to get over 50; it’s just kind of my gut on it.”

Tyler Yaremchuk: “Yeah, and I do think there’s something to be said that, right now, he’s shooting the puck a lot more than early in the year. I think he does have the mindset of ‘I’m going to try to score more this season.’ Draisaitl and him had a bit of a joke earlier in the year that Draisaitl said that he could maybe pop home 60 this year.

But I also think at some point, you always revert back to your old habits, and McDavid has always been a pass-first guy, and I think they’ll just be stretches this year where, like you said, he’ll have runs like he’s on now, eight goals in eight games to start the season, but there will be runs where he only scores twice in 10 games.

I guess the better question is, he’s on pace for 150+ points right now, do you think he can keep up that kind of ridiculous pace? Do you think he could be the first guy since the ’90s to crack the 150-point mark?”

Mike McKenna: “Looking across the league and seeing that most teams are now well over three goals a game, like scoring is up. I don’t want to say no on that, but if he’s healthy for all 82 games, I think he could hit 140, maybe nudge up and gets 150; it’s just hard in today’s game and through the course of the season. We always see scoring up in the beginning of the year, and it starts to come back down. So again I think it’s kind of a long shot, but who’s going to touch this guy for the scoring race? I don’t know; he’s on a different planet.”

You can watch the full episode here…