November 25, 2024 by Eric Friesen

Edmonton Oilers superstar Connor McDavid has been the greatest offensive player in the world since his second NHL season in 2016-17.

With more than 1,000 career NHL points and 14 individual awards, including five Art Ross Trophies as scoring champion, by age 27, McDavid has the numbers and hardware to support his status as the best player in the league. After a slow start to the year, McDavid has rocketed up the scoring race over the past two weeks, and should still be considered the favourite to win the Art Ross Trophy this season.

When he returned from a lower-body injury on November 6, McDavid ranked 108th in the NHL scoring race, with just 10 points in 11 games. But after tallying 18 points in his last eight games, McDavid has quickly climbed up the leaderboard, leapfrogging 98 players in the process.

The Oilers captain is currently tied for 10th in points (28), seven behind the league leader, Nathan MacKinnon, with 35. McDavid was in a similar position a year ago — he sustained an early-season injury, fell below a point per game, and spent the majority of the season chasing MacKinnon and eventual Art Ross Trophy winner, Nikita Kucherov, for the scoring title.

McDavid trailed Kucherov by 11 points at the All-Star break in late January. Incredibly, McDavid briefly overtook the NHL scoring lead in March, before MacKinnon and Kucherov both ultimately passed him again, finishing third in the league in points in 2023-24 (the first time he had placed lower than second since his rookie season in 2015-16).

Related: 1,000 points for McDavid: “Legendary”

With less ground to make up and more track to get there, McDavid has even better odds of catching MacKinnon in the scoring race this season. The Newmarket, Ontario native tallied 116 points in his final 60 games last season, which is a 158-point pace over a full 82-game schedule. Even more impressively, he piled up the points at this rate while playing through a core muscle injury that limited his ability to shoot the puck.

If a now-healthy McDavid were to equal that total in the remaining 60 games this season, he would finish with 144 points in 79 games. That would make McDavid only the fifth player in NHL history to record multiple 140-point seasons, joining Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Phil Esposito and Marcel Dionne. It likely would also be enough to secure his fourth Art Ross Trophy in the past five seasons and sixth overall.

The 27-year-old, who already has the most Art Ross Trophies among active NHL players, could match Lemieux and Gordie Howe for the second-most ever this year. While it will be a daunting task to break Gretzky’s NHL record of 10 scoring titles, it seems inevitable that McDavid will win at least two more Art Ross Trophies in his future Hockey Hall of Fame career and be second only to “The Great One” on this list of legends.

Given his relatively young age and utter dominance over the rest of the league, I still think McDavid’s peak offensive season is ahead of him. Unfortunately, due to the injury he sustained in October, it’s unlikely he reaches a new career-high in points in 2024-25. Still, he returned ahead of schedule, giving himself a real chance to contend for another scoring title.

McDavid recorded a historic 100 assists in 76 games last season, becoming the first player to achieve the feat since Gretzky had 122 in 1990-91. While he might not hit triple digits again this year, McDavid has averaged 93 assists per 82 games since 2020-21, so he should still finish at or near the top of the league in helpers.

What will certainly have a greater impact on McDavid’s chances to lead the league in points is his increased goal-scoring rate. After scoring a league-leading 64 goals in 2022-23, McDavid notched just 32 goals last season, which as mentioned above, can be at least somewhat attributed to the injury he suffered in October 2023.

The former Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy winner has 11 goals in his first 19 games this season, including eight goals in his last eight contests. McDavid is on pace for 46 goals in 79 games this year, which would be the second-highest total of his career. However, he could easily hit the 50-goal mark again now that he’s refocused his efforts on being hockey’s most dangerous dual threat offensively.

Another reason to believe McDavid will take home the Art Ross is because he’s a supernova on the power-play. Only six of his 28 points have come on the power-play so far this season (21.4%), but that will percentage will surely improve over the next five months. McDavid has produced 33.6% of his career points with the man-advantage, so expect a bump in production from the captain when the Oilers’ power-play starts converting on their opportunities with more regularity.

Can McDavid win his sixth Art Ross Trophy this season? Absolutely. Does he still have hill to climb to chase down arguably the second-best dynamic attacker in the league with a seven-point advantage? Also, yes.

That said, no other player in the league can produce offence at McDavid’s level. He’s one of the most dominant scorers in the history of the game, and has better quality and depth around him than at any point in his 10-year NHL career. So, with nearly roughly three-quarters of the season to play, McDavid should be the clear-cut frontrunner to reclaim the Art Ross Trophy next spring.