McDavid Ties Lemieux and Gretzky's Eight-Game Assists Mark With 17

Connor McDavid scored twice and set up three more as Edmonton won 6-2 at Utah on Saturday night, and the total underneath the result is the story. Eight games into the season he has 23 points, six goals and 17 assists, with a point in every game. The 17 assists tie Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky for the most any player has recorded through the first eight games of a season, NHL.com reports.

The game was 40 seconds old when he opened the scoring, sent in by Leon Draisaitl, cutting wide through the left circle and sliding a backhand around Karel Vejmelka’s left pad. That goal was his seventh in the opening minute of a game, tying Mark Messier’s franchise record. He closed the scoring himself, poking the puck away from John Marino in the neutral zone and finishing the breakaway for 6-2. In between, Edmonton settled a series Utah had opened by winning 4-2 in Edmonton on Thursday.

What are the two records, exactly?

They are different kinds of mark, and keeping them separate is what makes the start measurable. The assists total is a tie: 17 in eight games, a number only Lemieux in 1995-96 and Gretzky in 1986-87 had reached at this point of a season. The 20-point mark is a race: NHL.com reports McDavid is the second fastest player ever to 20 points in a season, one game behind Lemieux, who did it in seven games in 1995-96. Put the other way round, no player had reached 20 points inside his first eight games for 31 years.

The company explains the coverage. McDavid’s place in the game’s history is argued on pages like our greatest NHL players list, and the trophies that measure a season sit in our Hart Trophy winners and Art Ross Trophy winners records. An eight-game start does not settle any of those arguments. It does put his name on a line that, until Saturday, had exactly two names on it.

Who else scored in the 6-2 win?

Zach Hyman, playing his first game since the season opener after missing six games, scored a power-play goal at 13:21 of the first period, taking a centering feed from McDavid that bounced off Mikhail Sergachev’s skate. Thirty-two seconds later Mathieu Joseph pounced on a misplayed puck for a breakaway goal and his first for the club. Kasperi Kapanen made it 4-0 in the second, Draisaitl made it 5-0 on a breakaway, and Vejmelka was pulled midway through the second after five goals on 17 shots, with Sebastian Cossa making three saves in relief.

Marino and Sergachev scored for Utah in the third. Tristan Jarry made 26 saves for Edmonton. Hyman’s return was one of three: Colton Dach played after missing four games and Jake Walman after missing three, NHL.com notes, and Evan Bouchard’s assist pushed his point streak to five games and his total to 16 points, the most by a defenseman in the league. Trent Frederic’s fight with Jack McBain, after the chippy Thursday game, was the night’s other talking point in the home coverage, The Hockey News reports. “It’s crazy. He’s flying,” Hyman said of McDavid. “It looks like he’s hit another gear this year.”

Why does the road record matter here?

Edmonton is 5-0-0 on the road, a franchise-best start away from home per the club’s reporting, and 6-1-1 overall. The five-game home stand that starts Tuesday against Minnesota is also the next test of the streak: a ninth straight game with a point keeps the Lemieux comparison alive for another week. The same Saturday slate produced a different kind of record in Montreal, where Cole Caufield’s 14th overtime goal set a Canadiens franchise mark against Buffalo. Caufield’s record is about one situation repeated for years. McDavid’s is about eight games played at a rate the league has seen twice before.

Coach Mike Babcock pointed at the part of the line that does not show in the scoring race. “Isn’t he plus-19 or something like that?” Babcock said, via NHL.com. “He’s done everything that I’ve asked, and done it with a way that he seems to enjoy it. He takes pride in doing things right.” McDavid played 19:52 on Saturday, The Hockey News notes, well down from the near 26 minutes he logged in Thursday’s loss.

What does an eight-game pace actually prove?

Less than the projection suggests, and the honest version is narrower. Eight games is a small sample, and multiplying 23 points across a full season produces a number no one should print as a forecast. What the evidence supports is this: McDavid has produced assists at a rate only two players in league history have matched through eight games, he has done it while Edmonton rotated injured players back into the lineup around him, and the gap at the top of the scoring race opened in the season’s second week. This is the same Oilers team that had to address a viral fan ejection story earlier this month; on the ice, the start has been considerably tidier than the noise around it.

What happens next in the streak?

Minnesota visits Edmonton on Tuesday, October 20, and the arithmetic from there is simple. A point extends the streak to nine games and keeps McDavid one quiet night away from matching Lemieux’s opening pace for a second week. The Lemieux season on the other side of the comparison, 1995-96, is the standard because Lemieux kept scoring after the fast start. Whether McDavid’s start becomes a season is a question for December and March. For now, the record line reads three names, and two of them have been there for three and four decades.