Thirty-one points in 10 games. Eight goals, 23 assists, and already a 12-point gap to the next name on the scoring chart. McDavid’s third five-point outing of the season arrived in a 6-5 shootout win over the Carolina Hurricanes, where linemate Leon Draisaitl also finished with five of his own.
The historical company is thin. McDavid is only the second player ever to produce three five-point nights inside a team’s first 10 games of a season. Mario Lemieux did it twice, in 1988-89 and 1992-93.
The pace is absurd. On an 84-game extrapolation, McDavid is tracking toward 260 points, a figure that would obliterate Wayne Gretzky’s single-season record of 215, set with these same Oilers in 1985-86.
Equally striking is his fingerprint on everything Edmonton does. McDavid has been on the ice for 37 of the Oilers’ 46 goals this season and directly involved in the scoring on 31 of them, roughly two-thirds of his team’s output.
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Chayka’s Toronto overhaul starts clicking
Toronto’s early-season signal came from a very different place on the depth chart. Defenceman Troy Stecher scored the game-winner against the New York Rangers with 28 seconds left in regulation, slipping a shot past Dylan Garand to break a 4-4 tie and secure a 5-4 win.
Multi-point nights from Brandon Duhaime, Zac MacEwen and Teddy Blueger, a fourth line that was never meant to carry the night, hinted at the identity the Maple Leafs’ new general manager was brought in to find. John Chayka, 36, became the 19th general manager in franchise history when MLSE named him on 3 May and has spent the summer reshaping the roster around deeper, tougher lines.
Stecher himself fit that template. The 32-year-old defenceman re-signed with Toronto on a two-year contract worth $2.7m at the end of June, a quiet piece of business that now looks sharper than it did in the summer.
The Gretzky conversation reopens
The McDavid-versus-Gretzky debate has simmered for years. A start like this one, before the calendar has even turned to November, pushes it back into the open.
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Only Gretzky has posted a 200-point season in NHL history, and he did it four times. McDavid’s last 150-plus season was 2022-23 with 153 points. To finish on 200 from here he would need to average more than 2.1 points per game across the rest of Edmonton’s schedule, a cadence no one has sustained over a full year since Lemieux and Gretzky in their primes.
Jack Eichel sits second in the league race on 19 points.
Edmonton’s next game is on home ice at Rogers Place.
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