Connor McDavid Has 23 Points in Eight Games: What His Start Means for Gretzky’s Record
Connor McDavid is 29 years old, playing for a new coach on a discounted contract, and he is off to the best start of his career.
McDavid put up two goals and three assists in Edmonton’s 6-2 win at Utah on Saturday night, his second five-point game of the young season. He has 23 points in eight games. Jack Eichel is second in the league with 18.
The Numbers Are Already Historic
McDavid’s 17 assists through eight games tie Mario Lemieux in 1995-96 and Wayne Gretzky in 1986-87 for the most in league history over that span. He is also the second-fastest player ever to 20 points in a season, behind only Lemieux, who needed seven games in 1995-96.
Saturday was his 16th career five-point game, which ties Steve Yzerman, Marcel Dionne and Jari Kurri for fourth all time. Gretzky had 96 of them. Lemieux had 51. The goal McDavid scored 40 seconds into the game was his seventh career opening-minute goal, tying a franchise record held by Mark Messier.
He did all of this in 19:52 of ice time, a season low.
About the Gretzky Comparison
Let us be careful with this one, because two different Gretzky records are getting mixed together.
McDavid has a point in every game Edmonton has played, an eight-game season-opening streak. Gretzky’s season-opening streak record is 51 games, set in 1983-84, during which he put up 153 points. McDavid is not approaching that. He is 43 games away from it.
The record actually in play is the single-season points mark of 215, which Gretzky set in 1985-86. McDavid is scoring at 2.88 points per game, which extrapolates to roughly 241 over an 84-game schedule. That is an eight-game pace rather than a projection, and anyone who has watched hockey knows what happens to October pace numbers. It is still the fastest anyone has threatened the number in four decades.
The Oilers Are Riding It
Edmonton is 6-1-1 and leads the NHL at 4.63 goals per game. The club is 5-0-0 on the road, the first time in franchise history it has opened with five straight road wins. The only regulation loss came to this same Utah team two nights earlier.
Mike Babcock, hired in June to replace Kris Knoblauch, has the simplest possible explanation. “It’s impossible to coach a team when your best player isn’t driving, and this guy’s driving,” Babcock said.
Zach Hyman, back from injury and scoring his first goal of the season in the win, put it another way. “It’s crazy. He’s flying,” Hyman said. “It looks like he’s hit another gear this year, finishing like crazy. So, it’s a good sign for our team.”
Utah defenseman Mikhail Sergachev did not bother arguing. McDavid, he said, is “the best player in the world.”
The Context Nobody Should Skip
McDavid signed a two-year, $25 million extension in October 2025 that kicked in this season, a $12.5 million cap hit that is well below what he could have commanded. He said at the time that the decision was about winning.
He has three Hart Trophies and six Art Ross Trophies, including last season’s, when he put up 138 points. He has 1,238 regular season points in 801 games and has never won a Stanley Cup.
That last sentence is the one that matters in Edmonton. The scoring was never the problem.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
