Connor McDavid’s start has gotten so absurd that even Wayne Gretzky is stopping to take it in.
After another huge night Thursday in the Oilers’ 5-4 loss to the Anaheim Ducks, McDavid has pushed his season total to 44 points in 17 games. He piled up four points in that one, and the numbers around him are getting hard to process: he has 34 assists, which is more than any other player in the league has total points. At his current clip, he’s tracking toward 217 points, a number that would wipe out Gretzky’s single-season record.
That record still belongs to Gretzky, who put up 215 points in 80 games for Edmonton in 1985-86. And on Friday, the man whose name sits at the top of that mountain made it clear he understands exactly what McDavid is doing.
“It’s incredible. He’s a tremendous young man, he’s obviously a great hockey player, and what he’s doing is truly remarkable,” Gretzky said of McDavid’s start to the season on Friday.
“Today the athletes, and I say this with a great deal of respect, as time goes on, the equipment gets better, the athletes get bigger and better, the game gets better, and it’s all positive. And what he’s doing now is remarkable.”
McDavid hasn’t just been piling up points in bunches. He has at least one in every game this season, and he’s already had three or more in seven of his 17 outings. His 44 points lead the league by 13, with teammate Leon Draisaitl next at 31 and Oilers defenceman Evan Bouchard right behind at 30.
Earlier this season, McDavid pointed to the group around him when talking about what’s driving the production.
“I think [Draisaitl] and I, when we did play together it was just a one-off or a situation where we needed to find one and we knew it wasn’t necessarily a long-term thing,” McDavid said. “So, to be able to have a stretch of games playing together - who knows what happens moving forward - but playing together has been so much fun, obviously, along with [ Vasily Podkolzin ] and [ Mattias Ekholm ] and [ Evan Bouchard ].
“I’ve said all along being out there with those guys, everybody knows where each other is, everybody has been reading off each other, playing fast, and everybody can make a play. It’s a pretty fun group to be out there with.”
The Oilers have matched that pace as a team. They’re 11-3-3 to start the year, tied with the Minnesota Wild for first in the Western Conference and sitting just behind the defending champion Carolina Hurricanes for the NHL lead in points.
Gretzky knows what a championship Oilers team looks like better than anyone. He helped Edmonton win four Stanley Cups in his nine seasons there, and the franchise hasn’t won since 1990, two years after he left for the Los Angeles Kings.
Now he sees McDavid carrying the kind of edge that could push the Oilers back there. Edmonton has fallen short in back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals against the Florida Panthers in 2024 and 2025, but Gretzky believes his old franchise has a captain who is built for this chase.
“More importantly he’s a wonderful young man, and what he’s doing for his hockey team, for the game, for the city of Edmonton - it’s unmatched right now,” Gretzky said. “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. You need that leadership that you want to get to that next level, and he has that in him.”
In Other News...
McDavid Took A Heavy Hit And Oilers Tempers Boiled Over
Connor McDavid took a heavy hit at Rogers Place and, as often happens when the Oilers captain gets roughed up, the temperature in the building rose fast. Edmonton was already in a chippy game against Anaheim, with penalties piling up and bodies finishing every play, and Evan Bouchards power-play goal late in the first period had already helped steady things on the scoreboard.
The hit on McDavid set off the kind of reaction the Oilers have been trying to channel all season, with Vasily Podkolzin jumping into the scrum and the officials sorting through the aftermath. Edmontons frustration was obvious as the physical play kept building, and the sequence left the Oilers facing the kind of discipline questions and emotional fallout that can linger well beyond one shift. [Read more 🡒]
Oilers Debut New Look With One Awkward Trend Hanging Over It
The NHLs new Hometown Remix jerseys have already started making the rounds, giving all 32 teams a fresh look built around pieces of their own cities. Around the league, clubs such as Florida, Chicago, San Jose, Montreal, Pittsburgh and Columbus have already worn the design in recent games, and the early results have been rough enough to turn the rollout into a minor curiosity.
Edmonton is next up, set to unveil its version in an upcoming home game, and the timing comes with a little extra baggage attached. The first wave of Hometown Remix appearances has produced more frustration than fanfare, so the Oilers will be hoping the new threads land better in the building than they have for several of their peers. [Read more 🡒]
Oilers Fans Have Every Reason To Be Furious Over This Call
A strange sequence during the Oilers-Ducks game left plenty of people in Edmonton shaking their heads, and not just because of the fight itself. Vasily Podkolzin and Drew Helleson got tangled up in an altercation that quickly turned into one of those moments where the NHLs rulebook seems to matter less than the interpretation on the ice, especially when the explanation coming back from the officials was anything but clear.
For Oilers fans, the frustration goes beyond a single whistle. The league has long wrestled with inconsistent standards on fighting and supplemental discipline, and this was another example of how murky those calls can feel in real time. The Aggressor Rule has been floated as a cleaner way to handle situations like this, but for now Edmonton is left with the same old complaint: too often, nobody seems to know exactly what the punishment should be until after the damage is done. [Read more 🡒]