Connor McDavid Joins Exclusive Group of NHL Legends After Explosive 10-Game Start

McDavid dominates early as Oilers star rewrites NHL history© X(formerly Twitter)/@NHLPR

Connor McDavid has 31 points in 10 games this season. That number sounds almost fictional, yet here we are. The Edmonton Oilers captain has officially crossed into territory that only three other players in NHL history have ever reached — Wayne Gretzky, Mike Bossy, and Mario Lemieux. Scoring 30 or more points in the first 10 games of a season was previously the kind of milestone that belonged purely to the 1980s. McDavid is making the hockey world reconsider everything it thought it knew about modern-era scoring limits.

McDavid's 10-Game Tear Puts Him in Rare Historical Company

To understand what McDavid has done, you have to look at who he is standing next to. Gretzky, who did it multiple times. Bossy, one of the most natural goal scorers ever to lace up skates. And Lemieux, who reached 30 points through 10 games three separate times during his Pittsburgh years. That is the company McDavid now shares after his outburst to open 2026-27.

The 2026 NHL is not the open-ice free-for-all of the 1980s. Systems are tighter, goalies are bigger, and the game has structurally produced fewer goals per team. So what McDavid is doing right now cannot be explained by era or convenience. He is simply producing at a level the sport was not supposed to see again.

His pace also has him on track for a record-breaking assists total, another marker that once seemed comfortably out of reach for any current player. Whether it holds over 82 games is a separate question. Through 10, there is no rationalising it away.

A Record That Was Never Supposed to Be Touched

Gretzky's single-season points record of 215 has functioned less as a record and more as an untouchable number for four decades. Lemieux came closest with 199. Nobody else has seriously threatened it. The scoring environment simply never allowed for it.

At his current pace, McDavid would finish with 260 points. That is not a projection meant to be taken as a prediction. But it forces the conversation, because the math keeps arriving at that figure regardless of how uncomfortable it makes people feel. A slump, an injury, a cold week against well-structured defences - any of those can redirect the season completely. Seventy-four games is a long way to go.

What matters is that right now, McDavid is doing something that forces even the most disciplined historians to pull out the old record books. People compared him to Gretzky when he was still a prospect. That comparison was always going to age well or not at all. After 10 games in 2026-27, it is ageing very well.