Connor McDavid joins rare club with another 5-point game to open season

Thursday's effort gives him 31 points for the season in just 10 games, which would be a 260-point pace over the 84-game season. 

The NHL record for the most points in a single season is 215 points, set by Wayne Gretzky during the 1985-86 season when he was also a member of the Oilers.

Adding to the jaw-dropping nature of his early point production is the fact he is, as of Thursday night, 12 points ahead of every other player in the NHL this season.

Jack Eichel (Vegas Golden Knights) is the league's second-leading scorer with 19 points, while he has played two additional games than McDavid. 

But that's not all.

Including Thursday's win, the Oilers have scored 46 goals this season.

McDavid has been on the ice for 37 of them (80% of their goals), which means they have managed to score only nine goals in 10 games without him on the ice. 

He has factored into the scoring (either scoring the goal or setting it up) on 31 of them (67.3%). 

All of these numbers are absurd and practically unheard of in the NHL. 

While this is impressive as it relates to McDavid, it does leave some big questions for how good the Oilers supporting cast is. That's simply not enough offense from the rest of the team, while they are being outscored at a concerning level when he is sitting on the bench. 

It is working as long as McDavid is playing at a record-setting pace. But at some point, he is not going to be averaging over three points per game. At some point, he will hit a cold spell. It happens to everybody over the course of a long season. The test for how good this Oilers team is will be what happens when McDavid hits one of those cold spells and whether or not they have enough help around him to make up for it. 

This has been the Oilers' biggest problem throughout McDavid's entire career, and it is just one of the flaws that have prevented them from winning a Stanley Cup with him. Even with the 8-1-1 record after Thursday's win, those problems are still lurking under the surface. McDavid is just hiding them.