Forget the race to 1,000 points: Connor McDavid is the third-best scorer ever

Credit: Oct 15, 2024; Edmonton, Alberta, CAN; Edmonton Oilers forward Connor McDavid (97) follows the play against the Philadelphia Flyers at Rogers Place. Mandatory Credit: Perry Nelson-Imagn Images

Connor McDavid’s pursuit of 1,000 points took a detour on Monday night.

An apparent ankle injury on his first shift left the league’s consensus best player limping to the bench. McDavid’s 1,000-point chase has been a hot topic since Point #900 in January. The NHL went as far as publishing a comprehensive public relations package covering ‘The Road to 1,000.’

Would the Oilers‘ captain be the third-fastest to the milestone?
Would he be the third-youngest?

The NHL’s record book will show that a sluggish start by McDavid’s standards — 10 points in his first 10 games — prevented him from catching Mike Bossy in terms of efficiency and Steve Yzerman in terms of age into the 1,000-point club.

But over his career to date, Connor McDavid is the the third-best scorer ever to skate in the NHL. And it’s not particularly close. With 1,000 points in view, we’re exploring why the only names McDavid is looking up at are Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux as a point-producer.

The History

Courtesy of the NHL, here are the 11 players to reach 1,000 points in the fewest number of games. McDavid is eight points short of membership to the club — 992 points in 655 games.

A who’s who of revered NHL snipers and setup men, without question. And while the details are accurate, it’s also a ridiculous list if we’re seeking any semblance of a level playing field.

In a league that already had its centennial, the 10 fastest players to 1,000 points did so in a 12-year span. Yes, really. No one has slipped onto the list since Steve Yzerman in 1993 — four years before McDavid was born. Yzerman, now the Red Wings‘ GM, is approaching his 60th birthday.

As a rule of thumb, if everyone on an all-time list played around the same time, there’s a reason. It’s not that they weren’t great players or Hall of Fame-worthy talent. In this case, it’s that an average NHL team in the early-to-mid 1980s was comparable to the hapless San Jose Sharks when it came to goal prevention.

So, let’s better understand McDavid’s performance by re-wiring the list and putting everyone on the same scoring scale.

The Fastest to 1,000 Points

We can’t know what McDavid would have done in the past. But we can contextualize his output based on how he performed in his own time. We’ll use era adjusted points and games played to recalibrate the list.

It’s a completely different list — one that has real meaning.

Adjusted to era, McDavid is comfortably the third-fastest to 1,000 points, which we’ll get to shortly. In fact, he was already at 1,055 points when he hobbled off the ice in Columbus on Monday.

Bossy, whose retirement came before he’d have reached 1,000 points in a neutral era, falls off entirely. Stastny, Kurri, Lafleur, Trottier, Savard, and Yzerman all disappear too. Aside from Gretzky and Lemieux at the top, and Esposito and Dionne at the bottom, order is restored.

Four new names occupy spots #4 through #7: Crosby scoots from 12th to fourth; Jagr from 13th to fifth; Malkin from 21st to sixth; and Ovechkin all the way from 26th to seventh. Sakic slides in at #9.

This makes perfect sense — the new top 10 actually represents the entire post-expansion era. You now have a balanced cross-section of Art Ross Trophy winners spanning generations.

McDavid’s Place as a Scorer

From our review of McDavid’s performance to date, two things are clear:

#1. McDavid is easily the third-most prolific scorer at this stage of his career.

The list of fastest to 1,000 era adjusted points above highlights McDavid’s absurd scoring level. Yes, Lemieux and Crosby missed parts of key seasons during their peak years. But we can’t punish McDavid for near-perfect attendance since his sophomore year. He’s sandwiched 44 games slower than Lemieux and 47 games faster than Crosby to reach 1,000 points. When it comes to per-game pace, McDavid in a neutral era scores 1.54 points-per-game. That’s only 0.11 behind Lemieux, yet 0.39 ahead of #10 on the list (Dionne). A mind-boggling 32 more points per season than the 10th-best scorer since expansion.

#2. If not for the pandemic, McDavid would have easily been the third-youngest to 1,000 points.

We don’t need to consider scoring climate for this one. McDavid missed 38 games between the NHL’s two COVID-abbreviated schedules. That’s a breezy 57 points at his pace. He’d have snagged point #1,000 sometime in February 2024, just a month or so after his 27th birthday. McDavid should have been eight months ahead of Yzerman and within a year of Lemieux, but in the NHL’s accounting below, he’ll be fourth — or fifth behind Dale Hawerchuk if sidelined more than one month.

Who’s Next?

McDavid has had no equals as a point-producer in the last 30 years. But to understand the gap within his generation, let’s check the pursuit of his contemporaries to 1,000 points. We’ll have a look at the three active studs with at least 850 career points at a point-per-game clip.

This is the trio that McDavid has competed with for scoring titles lately: Colorado‘s Nathan MacKinnon; Tampa‘s Nikita Kucherov; and bestie Leon Draisaitl.

We won’t get fancy with seasonal era adjustments given this group’s career has largely overlapped, and we’ll assume each maintains their 2023-24 scoring pace until they reach 1,000 points.

A couple of clear takeaways:

McDavid stands alone. He’s projected to get to 1,000 points 138 games faster than Kucherov, 176 ahead of frequent linemate Drasaitl, and 191 games before MacKinnon. A staggering gap.
Kucherov should get to 1,000 points faster than Draisaitl and MacKinnon. Barring injury, MacKinnon will be first of the trio to the milestone, but Kucherov will get there about a half-season faster by game count.

Closing Thoughts

When McDavid finally sinks his talons into 1,000 points, he’ll do so as the third-most efficient scorer in NHL history. Legacies aren’t set at 27, though. He’ll have to avoid serious injury and play at an elite level for a long time to retire at the very top of the sport. Offensively, he’s on that path right now.

So, please do your best to ignore anything that suggests McDavid should be happy to be in the same company as 10 guys that all played in the 1980s. On the way to 1,000 points, he’s eclipsed all but Gretzky and Lemieux — while leaving 30 years of talented scorers in the dust.

Follow @AdjustedHockey on X; visit www.adjustedhockey.com; data from Hockey-Reference.com, NHL.com.