Connor McDavid's 31-point start by the numbers: how rare is it?

With 1:28 left in regulation on Thursday night, Connor McDavid got a piece of a puck and deflected it in. That goal tied the game 5-5. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scored the only goal of the shootout after a scoreless overtime, and Edmonton walked off with a 6-5 win over the defending Stanley Cup champions.

The goal was McDavid's second of the night. He also had three assists. That five-point game pushed him to 31 points in 10 games, and it put his name on a list that had not added anyone in 31 years.

So here is the question we want to answer: how rare is this start, really? Not in adjectives. In numbers.

The list nobody has joined since 1995-96

Only three players before McDavid ever got to 30 points in 10 games or fewer, according to NHL.com and Daily Faceoff. They are the names you would guess.

• Mike Bossy did it in 1984-85.
• Wayne Gretzky did it in 1984-85 too.
• Mario Lemieux did it three times: 1988-89 (in just eight games), 1992-93 and 1995-96 (in nine games).

That is it. Five times, three players, all of them between 1984-85 and 1995-96. McDavid is the first to get there this century.

There is a franchise angle too. Gretzky's 30 points through Edmonton's first 10 games was the Oilers' record. McDavid's 31 now sits on top, per The Big Lead.

Here is how the 31 breaks down, game by game, from ESPN's box scores: 2, 5, 2, 3, 1, 4, 1, 5, 3 and 5. He scored eight goals and added 23 assists. He has not been held without a point once, and he has not been held without an assist once either.

The assist streak is the real story

Points get the headlines. The assists are what make this start strange.

McDavid has at least one assist in all 10 Oilers games. NHL.com says he is the fourth player ever to open a season with a 10-game assist streak. It is also the fifth time in his career he has strung together 10 straight games with an assist. Only Gretzky has more of those streaks, with 13.

Then there is the speed of it. In the 4-3 overtime win over Minnesota on Tuesday, McDavid had three more assists and reached 20 for the season in his ninth game. That is the fastest anyone has ever gotten to 20 assists, The Big Lead reported. The old mark was 10 games, shared by Gretzky, Lemieux and Pat LaFontaine.

Three of his games this season have been five-point nights:

• Oct. 1 at Vancouver: one goal, four assists in a 9-7 win.
• Oct. 17 at Utah: two goals, three assists in a 6-2 win.
• Oct. 22 vs. Carolina: two goals, three assists in the 6-5 shootout win.

NHL.com says only one other player has had three five-point games inside his first 10 games of a season, and that was Lemieux. Thursday was the 17th five-point game of McDavid's career.

Where the points come from

A start like this usually leans on one thing. This one leans on two.

The power play is the first. McDavid has 11 power-play assists, and Edmonton's power play is running at 35.3 percent, second-best in the league. On Thursday, three of his assists came on the man advantage. Carolina coach Rod Brind'Amour put it plainly, as quoted by NHL.com: "when you give them the ice, the power plays, that's death."

Even strength is the second, and we think it matters more. McDavid has 19 even-strength points (seven goals, 12 assists) and is plus-18. That is not a player padding his numbers on special teams alone.

He also has help. Leon Draisaitl is second in the NHL with 21 points, including five of his own on Thursday. Evan Bouchard has 19. Draisaitl's reaction to his captain's start made the NHL.com headline: "just not real."

The team result follows. Edmonton is 8-1-1, with the league's best points percentage at .850.

The pace, and why to be careful with it

Projections are fun and dangerous. NHL.com puts McDavid on pace for 260 points over the 84-game season. Gretzky's single-season record is 215 points (52 goals, 163 assists), set in 1985-86 over 80 games. McDavid's own career high is 153, from 2022-23.

We would not build anything on a 260-point pace. Ten games is a small sample, and hot starts cool. What the numbers do say is narrower and more useful: McDavid, at 29 and in his 12th season, is producing at a rate only Bossy, Gretzky and Lemieux have matched this early. And he is doing it through assists at a speed nobody has.

Next up: the Toronto Maple Leafs (6-4-2) visit Edmonton on Saturday at 7 p.m. ET.

What it means on the board

• Assist and point props. An assist in 10 of 10 games is exactly the kind of run our player-prop research tracks, and McDavid's assist line has shown up on our board this season. The read is volume: 23 assists in 10 games, 11 of them on the power play.
• Linked markets. Draisaitl and Bouchard showed up with him on Thursday's first goal: it was a Draisaitl power-play tip with assists to Bouchard and McDavid, so one goal can touch several of their props at once. That is a reason to think about correlation before stacking them.
• Totals. Three of Edmonton's 10 games have finished with double-digit combined goals on the final: a 6-5 overtime loss and a 9-7 win against Vancouver, and 6-5 in Thursday's shootout. Edmonton games can go high when the power play is converting, so penalties the Oilers draw are the swing factor worth watching.
• Small sample. Ten games of history-level scoring is a signal, not a promise. In our view, the price you get on a McDavid prop after a run like this matters as much as the read.

Follow the full slate on the NHL board and free picks, read the night that got him to 31 in our Hurricanes vs. Oilers recap, or brush up on how player props work.

21+. Research and commentary, not betting advice.