It was a special night in Edmonton, one that gave those in attendance an opportunity to reflect on the past and look ahead to what could be next.
Connor McDavid buried a pass from Leon Draisaitl in the second period against the Nashville Predators to become the 99th player in NHL history to reach 1,000 career points. It was just the 659th game of McDavid’s career, making the 27-year-old the fourth-fastest to reach the mark in league history.
“Some of these things have kind of hit me a little bit more emotionally than I would have thought,” McDavid said after the game. “You spend your whole life playing hockey and loving the game just wanting to play in the NHL. A thousand points later, I’ve been doing it for ten years now, and it’s pretty special. You take it for granted sometimes and these moments give you a chance to look back and be grateful.”
The Oilers poured off the bench to celebrate after McDavid scored his 1,000th point and the fans at Rogers Place in Edmonton gave the captain a standing ovation. The assists on the goal fittingly came from Draisaitl and Darnell Nurse, two long-time teammates and close friends of McDavid.
“Just seeing the way the players reacted, that means the world to me. It means everything to me,” McDavid said. “Seeing my teammates happy and hearing the fans, that stuff means more to me than any of the numbers or anything like that. So it was a really special moment, honestly, and these milestones – I said the other day – it’s a great time to reflect and look back, and it’s been a good ten years. Hopefully, ten more good ones.”
Since being selected with the first-overall pick in the draft nearly a decade ago, McDavid has more than lived up to the expectations that come with being a generational talent. Now in his tenth season in the NHL, the product of Richmond Hill, Ontario has five Art Ross Trophies, three Hart Trophies, a Rocket Richard Trophy, and a Conn Smythe Trophy.
Though adding a Stanley Cup and perhaps an Olympic gold medal are likely the unchecked boxes at the top of McDavid’s mind, it’s hard not to wonder whether he can become the second NHL player ever to score 2,000 points.
“If not him, who else? That’s the only question,” Leon Draisaitl said when asked about his teammate scoring another 1,000 points. “I never bet against Connor McDavid. I’ve learned that over the last ten years. And it wouldn’t surprise me.”
Can Connor McDavid score 2,000 points in the NHL?
The only player ever to reach the 2,000-point mark is Wayne Gretzky, who has more than twice as many points as anybody else in league history at 2,857. The players in second to fifth in all-time scoring are Jaromir Jagr with 1,921 points, Mark Messier with 1,887, Gordie Howe with 1,850, and Ron Francis with 1,798.
The common theme among all of these players was longevity. Jagr spent a few years in the KHL in the middle of his career but played in the NHL until he was 45. Messier had back-to-back 18-goal seasons with the New York Rangers when he was 42 and 43 before the 2004-05 lockout ended his career. Howe retired from the NHL at the age of 42 and then scored 508 points over seven seasons in the WHA playing with his two sons. Francis was the youngest of these players to hang up the skates at 40 years old.
Among the three players who reached 1,000 points faster than McDavid did, two had their careers significantly limited by ailments beyond their control. Mike Bossy scored his 1,000th point in his 656th game in 1985-86 but only played one more season after that because of chronic knee and back injuries. The New York Islanders legend wound up with 1,126 points in 752 NHL games.
Mario Lemieux scored the 1,000th point of his career in his 513th game during the 1991-92 season and appeared to be on his way to challenging Gretzky’s scoring pace for years to come. In January of 1993, Lemieux announced that he had been diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma. He incredibly played through his cancer treatments and performed at a very high level, but Lemieux’s career was limited to 915 games because of exhaustion from radiation and injury. The Pittsburgh Penguins superstar finished with 690 goals and 1,723 points.
The most important thing for McDavid to score another 1,000 points in the NHL is a good bill of health. He missed a chunk of his rookie season in 2015-16 because of a collarbone injury and suffered a gruesome knee injury at the end of the 2018-19 season. Otherwise, McDavid has largely avoided injury throughout the first decade of his career, playing in 91.6 percent of available games since entering the league.
Through his first ten seasons in the NHL, McDavid has been scoring an average of 1.52 points per game. Since the 2021-22 season when the Oilers really started to find their groove as an elite offence, that pace has increased to 1.69 points per game.
If he keeps up the 1.69 PPG pace, it’ll take McDavid roughly 590 games to score another 1,000 points. That’s seven season-and-a-half season’s worth of games, assuming he plays in at least 80 each year. Scoring at the 1.52 PPG pace he’s scored at throughout his career, it would take about 660 games, which is eight-and-a-half healthy seasons. Even factoring in an age-related decline in production, he can score at a point-per-game pace from now until he’s 40 and reach 2,000 points.
Connor McDavid is going to turn 28 years old in January and he’s likely going to sign an eight-year contract extension with the Edmonton Oilers in the off-season. Knock on wood, but it’s not unreasonable to expect him to be nearing the 2,000-point mark by the time that contract comes to an end.
