Art Ross Trophy Winners (NHL Scoring Leaders)

Wayne Gretzky won the Art Ross Trophy as the NHL’s regular-season scoring leader 10 times, more than anyone in the award’s history, and seven of those came in consecutive seasons from 1981 to 1987. The most recent winner is Nikita Kucherov, who led the league with 144 points in 2024.

The Art Ross is the league’s one purely objective major award: it goes to whoever finishes with the most points, no vote involved. That makes the list a clean record of who scored most in each era. Below are the recent winners and every player who has won it more than twice. Figures are as of the 2025 season.

Recent Art Ross Trophy winners

Here are the NHL scoring leaders from 2015 through 2024, with their points total that season.

Year	Winner	Team	Points
2024	Nikita Kucherov	Tampa Bay Lightning	144
2023	Connor McDavid	Edmonton Oilers	153
2022	Connor McDavid	Edmonton Oilers	123
2021	Connor McDavid	Edmonton Oilers	105
2020	Leon Draisaitl	Edmonton Oilers	110
2019	Nikita Kucherov	Tampa Bay Lightning	128
2018	Connor McDavid	Edmonton Oilers	108
2017	Connor McDavid	Edmonton Oilers	100
2016	Patrick Kane	Chicago Blackhawks	106
2015	Jamie Benn	Dallas Stars	87

McDavid dominates the recent window, winning five of ten scoring titles, with Edmonton teammate Leon Draisaitl taking a sixth. His 153 points in 2023 is the highest total any player has posted since Mario Lemieux in the mid-1990s.

Every multiple Art Ross Trophy winner

Here are the players who have won the Art Ross more than twice.

Wins	Player	Years
10	Wayne Gretzky	1981-1987, 1990, 1991, 1994
6	Gordie Howe	1951-1954, 1957, 1963
6	Mario Lemieux	1988, 1989, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997
5	Phil Esposito	1969, 1971-1974
5	Jaromír Jágr	1995, 1998-2001
5	Connor McDavid	2017, 2018, 2021, 2022, 2023
4	Stan Mikita	1964, 1965, 1967, 1968
3	Guy Lafleur	1976, 1977, 1978

Gretzky’s 10 is a tier of its own. Howe and Lemieux anchor the next level on six, then a group of three players — including the only active name, McDavid — share five each.

Gretzky’s seven straight, and the 1980s scoring boom

Gretzky won seven consecutive Art Ross Trophies from 1981 to 1987, a stretch when he was posting point totals no one has approached since. His 215 points in 1985-86 is the single-season record, and he twice topped 200 in a career that redefined what scoring at the top looked like.

Part of that reflects the era — the 1980s were the highest-scoring years in NHL history — but Gretzky led the league by margins that dwarfed his peers regardless of context. For where his career totals sit, see our lists of the most points in NHL history and the most goals in NHL history, both of which he leads.

McDavid: the modern chase

Connor McDavid is the first player since the 1990s with a realistic shot at the all-time totals. His five scoring titles by his late 20s put him level with Esposito and Jágr, and his 153-point season in 2023 was the highest in the salary-cap era, when defenses are far tighter than in Gretzky’s day.

Whether he can reach Howe’s and Lemieux’s six, let alone Gretzky’s 10, depends on longevity and on Kucherov and a new wave of scorers. For now he is the only active player on the multiple-winner list, and the recent race is largely his against the field.

Why the Art Ross reads differently from the Hart

Because the Art Ross is decided by raw points, it can diverge from the Hart Trophy for MVP, which is a vote. A player can lead the league in scoring and not be judged most valuable, and vice versa — voters sometimes reward a lower-scoring player on a weaker team.

That objectivity is the appeal. The Art Ross is the cleanest measure of who scored most in a season, era by era. For the defensive counterpart and the wider all-time picture, see our lists of Norris Trophy winners and the greatest NHL players of all time. Ten scoring titles is the mark, and only Gretzky has ever managed even seven.