Each day in the month of August we’ll be examining a different NHL team — from looking back at last season to discussing a player under pressure to identifying X-factors to asking questions about the future. Today we look at the Edmonton Oilers.
Four years into his NHL career and Connor McDavid has already matched (and probably even exceeded) the hype that surrounded his arrival in the league.
He is the best, most dynamic, and most dominant offensive player in the league, a two-time scoring champion, a league MVP, and has seen his point production increase every year going from 48 (in only 45 games), to 100, to 108, and then to 116 this past season.
[More: 2018-19 In review | Under Pressure | Three Questions | X-Factor]
Assuming he stays healthy there is no reason to think he will not be able to top the century mark this season. If he does that would be four 100-point seasons in a row, an accomplishment only a select few players in league history have ever reached.
It is also completely unheard of for this era.
In the history of the league only 13 players have ever hit 100 points in at least four consecutive seasons. Here is the list:
Two things stand out here.
For one, they are all Hall of Famers and among the greatest offensive players to ever play in the league.
Second, it has not happened since the early 1990s, with the bulk of the players on this list doing it between the 1980 and 1993 seasons when scoring in the league was at an all-time high. During those 13 years 100-point seasons were fairly common across the league, as it was a mark that was reached 158 times by 61 different players.
Just for comparisons sake, there have only been 30 100-point seasons by 18 different players over the past 13 seasons.
McDavid, Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Alex Ovechkin are the only players to have at least three during that stretch.
Crosby (five 100-point seasons during between 2006 and 2019) is the only one with more than McDavid.
Keep in mind, McDavid has only played in four of those seasons. If he does it again this season he would be just the seventh player to ever have four 100-point seasons within their first five years in the league.
He is already as dominant as an individual player can be in the NHL, and that is what makes it even more disappointing and frustrating that the Oilers have not been able to build something meaningful around him, and do not really seem to be close to doing so, either.
MORE:
• ProHockeyTalk’s 2019 NHL free agency tracker
• Your 2019-20 NHL on NBC TV schedule
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Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.