Connor McDavid has 31 points in Edmonton’s first 10 games: eight goals, 23 assists and a point in every game. Only three players had ever reached 30 points in 10 games or fewer: Mario Lemieux, three times, Mike Bossy and Wayne Gretzky. Nobody had done it since Lemieux in 1995-96. These are also the 10 best games of McDavid’s own career, and they sharpen a question his career keeps asking: how close is he to the two players at the top of every list?
The fastest starts in NHL history
Counting each team’s first 10 games of a season, five starts have reached 30 points, and McDavid’s 31 is the fourth-best of them. The highest is Lemieux’s 37 in 1988-89.
| Player | Season | Points in 10 games |
|---|---|---|
| Mario Lemieux | 1988-89 | 37 |
| Mike Bossy | 1984-85 | 32 |
| Mario Lemieux | 1992-93 | 32 |
| Connor McDavid | 2026-27 | 31 |
| Wayne Gretzky | 1984-85 | 30 |
The league’s own count uses a player’s games rather than his team’s, and adds a sixth: Lemieux missed two of Pittsburgh’s first 10 games in 1995-96 and still had 32 points in his first 10, reaching 30 in nine. Lemieux got to 30 in eight games in 1988-89, while Bossy, Gretzky and McDavid each needed all 10. McDavid’s 31 also passed Gretzky’s 30 from 1984-85 as the most by an Oiler in the first 10 games of a season. Gretzky’s famous 1983-84 season, the one with the 51-game point streak, started with 25.
The closest McDavid’s start comes to any of them is Lemieux’s in 1992-93: a point in every game, and three five-point games in the first 10, the same as McDavid’s this season. The third came on Thursday in a 6-5 shootout win over Carolina, his 17th career five-point game, the fourth-most in league history.
The 10 best games of his career
Before this season McDavid’s best start was 22 points, in both 2021-22 and 2022-23, and his best stretch of 10 games at any point of a season was 29, from April 19 to May 8, 2021. This one beats both. Counting the last two games of last season he has a point in 12 straight, the longest run in the league, and every one of them is on our streaks page.
| Season | First 10 games | Best 10 games |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-27 | 31 | 31 |
| 2025-26 | 12 | 27 |
| 2024-25 | 10 | 21 |
| 2023-24 | 10 | 25 |
| 2022-23 | 22 | 25 |
| 2021-22 | 22 | 22 |
| 2020-21 | 17 | 29 |
| 2019-20 | 17 | 23 |
| 2018-19 | 17 | 20 |
How he is doing it
Most of it has come at even strength: 19 of the 31 points, with 11 on the power play and a shorthanded goal. Twenty-six are primary points, goals or first assists. He has a point on 31 of the 46 goals Edmonton has scored, 67%, and the Oilers are 8-1-1. He has had two or more points in eight of the 10 games, plays 23:46 a night and leads the league by 10 points, ahead of teammate Leon Draisaitl. The one number likely to come down is his finishing: eight goals on 25 shots, from chances our model rates at 5.2 expected goals.
Is McDavid up there with the greatest?
On scoring rate, he is already third. Among players with 500 career points, only Gretzky and Lemieux have more points a game, and McDavid sits clear of Bossy in fourth.
| Player | Games | Points | Per game |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wayne Gretzky | 1,487 | 2,857 | 1.92 |
| Mario Lemieux | 915 | 1,723 | 1.88 |
| Connor McDavid | 804 | 1,251 | 1.56 |
| Mike Bossy | 752 | 1,126 | 1.50 |
The gap to the top two is real, but it was built in a different game. Gretzky’s and Lemieux’s best seasons came when teams combined for seven or eight goals a game; this season it is 6.18. That is why McDavid’s 153 points in 2022-23 were the most since Lemieux’s 161 in 1995-96, and why his 1.87 points a game that season is the sixth-best of any season of 60 games or more since 1990-91, behind three Lemieux seasons, Gretzky in 1990-91 and Adam Oates in 1990-91.
The trophy case points the same way. He has six Art Ross Trophies, tied with Gordie Howe and Lemieux behind Gretzky’s 10, including last season’s, when he had 138 points. He has three Hart Trophies and finished second for a fourth last season, 10 voting points behind Nikita Kucherov. His five Ted Lindsay Awards tie Gretzky’s. He reached 1,000 points in his 659th game, the fourth-fastest after Gretzky, Lemieux and Bossy, and he has nine 100-point seasons, where Gretzky had 15 and Lemieux 10.
What he does not have is a Stanley Cup. Gretzky won four and Lemieux two. McDavid won the Conn Smythe in 2024 for a team that lost the Final, lost the Final again in 2025, both times to Florida, and went out in the first round to Anaheim last spring.
What a start like this is worth
Over 84 games, 31 points in 10 is a 260-point pace, which will not last: the record is Gretzky’s 215 in 1985-86. To pass his own best of 153, McDavid needs 123 more in Edmonton’s last 74 games, 1.66 a game, against a career rate of 1.54 before this season. Every player’s line this season is on the points leaderboard, and the goals side of the record book is in our story on the most goals in a season.
The market already has him as the clear MVP favorite: 53% for the Hart on the Hart Trophy market, against 12% for Macklin Celebrini and 6.6% for Nathan MacKinnon. A week ago he had only just overtaken Celebrini. The Art Ross market is listed but not trading yet.
How we counted
This season’s numbers are from our box scores through October 22. McDavid’s best stretches are every run of 10 straight games he played within a season. The fastest starts count each team’s first 10 games, from the official game logs. Career points a game include this season, among players with 500 career points. Prices are the morning of October 23, not live, and a price is not a prediction or advice.
