It’s time to talk about Connor McDavid’s historic 260-point pace

At the National Hockey League’s northernmost outpost, things are happening that haven’t happened in 40 years.

Connor McDavid, shot out of a cannon to begin the 2026-27 season, is breaking records left, right, and centre, producing at a level rarely seen. It was on full display Thursday night, as the Edmonton Oilers captain led his team to victory, with his second five-point night in the last three games, boosting his totals on the year to a stunning 31 in 10 games.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, it’s just… it’s not real,” said a bewildered Leon Draisaitl, who had a five-point night of his own in Edmonton’s 6-5 shootout win over the Carolina Hurricanes.

“He’s maybe the greatest player to ever play in my books.”

He may not be wrong.

Wayne Gretzky has long been considered the best to ever play in the NHL, scoring over 200 points four times in the Oilers dynastic ’80s, putting up totals that long felt so out of reach that merely bringing up the idea of another player reaching such a mark would earn you a swift scoff. Now, McDavid is on pace for 260 points — 45 more than Gretzky’s record-holding 215 he scored in 1985-86.

Two hundred points, let alone 260, would be nothing short of staggering, but is it really doable?

What’s buoyed McDavid’s numbers this season has been an on-ice shooting percentage of 28.7 per cent, leading to 9.6 goals per hour, while contributing a point on 83.8 per cent of the Oilers goals. Those marks are all up from the average of his three prior seasons, where his on-ice shooting percentage sat at 10.6 per cent, his goals for per hour mark of 5.6, and his point contribution percentage of 79.7 per cent.

If McDavid were to cool off to just his averages over the last three seasons in all three of these marks, he would score somewhere between 122 and 131 points the rest of the way, depending on his ice time, giving him 153, tying a career-high, to 162 points.

The problem with this is that McDavid isn’t showing signs of slowing down 10 games into the season. Thirteen of his 31 points this season have come in the last three games, alone. If we look at the midpoint between what he’s done the last three years compared to this year, assuming McDavid slows down from intergalactic to simply galactic, he’s still looking at adding 166 to 179 points, ice time dependent, putting him anywhere from 197 to 210 points.

If Thursday’s game against Carolina is any indication, it’s hard to think of him slowing down much. Eighty-four games is a long-season though, but watching him produce at will against the defending Stanley Cup champions, one of the toughest-to-play against teams in the league for years running, it’s scary to think about what he can continue to do against the rest of the league.

“I feel like I get asked this a lot,” said Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who had a second period goal and the shootout winnner, when asked after the game if this is the best he’s ever seen McDavid play. “And I feel like my answer is always yes, because he just keeps raising his level.

“It’s impressive. I’ve been watching on TV, and you see it live in person, you appreciate it so much, but on TV, it’s pretty special too.”

McDavid, when he scored 153 points in 2022-23, was the first player to hit 150 points since Mario Lemieux in 1995-96. It would only be fitting for him to become the only player not named Wayne Gretzky to score 200 in a season.