Edmonton Oilers forward Connor McDavid is having an extraordinary season, even by his own standards. If he increases the pace a bit, he could find himself in a more than select club at the end of the 2022-2023 season.
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Number 97 from Alberta has 66 points in 35 games, or 1.89 points per game. This is the best point-to-out ratio of his career. In 2020-2021, the Oilers captain had 105 points in 56 games, or 1.88 points per game.
In the history of the National League, the plateau of two points per game (with a minimum of 35 games played, the number of games McDavid has played this season) has been crossed only 16 times. However, these are two players who separate these 16 occurrences: Wayne Gretzky (10 times) and Mario Lemieux (6 times).
Gretzky has managed to clear the 200-point milestone on four occasions, but this is the lowest scoring occasion in which he managed the most points per game. In 1983-84, he accumulated 205 points in 74 games, for an average of 2.77.
For his part, Lemieux is no exception. In 1992-1993, Lemieux posted an astronomical harvest of 160 points in just 60 games, for an average of 2.67.
Coming back to McDavid, he’s riding like hell, but he’ll have to pick up the pace if he wants to hit the two-point-per-game plateau. If he plays all of his team’s games by the end of the campaign, i.e. 47, he should amass 98 points during this period; an average of 2.09 points per game. Thus, he would end the campaign with 164 points in 82 games and join Gretzky and Lemieux in the hyper select club.
The closest to the two-point-per-game plateau was Bill Cowley of the Boston Bruins with 71 points in 36 outings in 1943-44. In more modern league history, Phil Esposito had 1.95 points per game (152 points in 78 meetings) in 1970-71 with the Bruins and Steve Yzerman had 1.94 points per game (155 points in 80 games) in 1988-1989 with the Detroit Red Wings.
