Connor McDavid

Connor McDavid is the center and captain of the Edmonton Oilers, and the defining offensive player of his NHL generation. Taken first overall in 2015, he had, through the 2025-26 season, recorded 1,220 points in 794 games — a per-game scoring rate that trails only Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux in league history. He has won the Art Ross Trophy as scoring champion six times and the Hart Memorial Trophy as most valuable player three times, and in 2024 he became one of the rare players named playoff MVP for a team that did not win the Stanley Cup. What he had not won, through the spring of 2026, was a championship — the one line still missing from a résumé otherwise built for first-ballot certainty.

Vitals
Born	January 13, 1997, Richmond Hill, Ontario
Position	Center (shoots left)
Teams	Edmonton Oilers (since 2015)
Draft	2015 NHL Entry Draft, 1st overall, Edmonton Oilers
Contract status	Two-year, $25M extension signed Oct. 6, 2025; $12.5M average annual value through 2027-28
Number	97

Erie and exceptional status

The exceptional kid. McDavid became the third player granted “exceptional player” status for early entry into the Ontario Hockey League, following John Tavares and Aaron Ekblad, per his OHL record. Erie selected him first overall in the 2012 OHL Priority Selection, and over three seasons with the Otters from 2012 to 2015 he recorded 285 points — 97 goals and 188 assists — in 166 regular-season games.

A junior sweep. In his final OHL season, 2014-15, McDavid swept the Canadian Hockey League’s major individual awards, named CHL Player of the Year, CHL Top Prospect and CHL Scholastic Player of the Year in the same spring. Erie would later retire his No. 97, the number he carried into the professional ranks.

Arrival in Edmonton

The arrival. The Oilers made McDavid the first overall pick of the 2015 NHL Entry Draft, the latest in a string of top selections the franchise had used to rebuild. A broken clavicle cut short his rookie 2015-16 campaign, which he finished with 16 goals and 48 points in 45 games. On October 5, 2016, at 19 years old, he was named Edmonton’s captain — the youngest captain in NHL history.

First hardware. In his first full season, 2016-17, McDavid led the league with 100 points and claimed the Art Ross Trophy, the Hart Memorial Trophy and the Ted Lindsay Award in one sweep, carrying the Oilers back to the playoffs. He repeated as scoring champion in 2017-18 with 108 points, establishing a level of individual production the rest of the league could not match.

The peak

The record seasons. McDavid won the Hart unanimously and the Art Ross in the shortened 2020-21 season, scoring 105 points in 56 games, then took another scoring title in 2021-22 with 123 points. His 2022-23 season stands as his statistical summit: 153 points on 64 goals and 89 assists, a total that delivered the Hart, the Art Ross, the Ted Lindsay and the Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy as the league’s leading goal scorer all at once.

The passer. In 2023-24 McDavid shifted his game toward distribution, posting 100 assists and 132 points even as Nikita Kucherov edged him for that season’s scoring title. It was a reminder that his dominance had never depended on any single category.

Back-to-back Cup Finals

Within one win. The 2024 playoffs produced the signature run of McDavid’s career to that point. He recorded 42 points in 25 games as Edmonton reached the Stanley Cup Final and pushed the Florida Panthers to a seventh game before losing. He was named the 2024 Conn Smythe Trophy winner as playoff MVP — the first skater from a losing finalist to take the award since Reggie Leach in 1976.

So close again. The Oilers returned to the Final in 2025 and again fell to Florida, this time in six games, with McDavid contributing 33 points in 22 games across the postseason run. Two straight trips to within a few wins of the Cup, and two straight defeats to the same opponent, framed the central tension of his prime.

The 2025-26 season and after

The sixth scoring title. In 2025-26 McDavid led the NHL with 138 points on 48 goals and 90 assists in 82 games, winning the Art Ross Trophy for the sixth time. He was a Hart finalist but finished second to Nikita Kucherov in the MVP vote, losing by ten voting points. The season ended in disappointment: after back-to-back Finals, Edmonton was eliminated by the Anaheim Ducks in the first round of the 2026 playoffs, four games to two. On October 6, 2025, he had signed a short-term extension that kept him in Edmonton through 2027-28 at a below-market figure, a decision widely read as pressure on the franchise to build a champion quickly.

By the numbers

Regular-season totals, per Hockey-Reference:

Season	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-
2015-16	45	16	32	48	-1
2016-17	82	30	70	100	+27
2017-18	82	41	67	108	+20
2018-19	78	41	75	116	+3
2019-20	64	34	63	97	-6
2020-21	56	33	72	105	+21
2021-22	80	44	79	123	+28
2022-23	82	64	89	153	+22
2023-24	76	32	100	132	+35
2024-25	67	26	74	100	+20
2025-26	82	48	90	138	+17

Career totals

Ranks

• 2nd Points, Oilers franchise history
• 2nd Assists, Oilers franchise history
• 5th Goals, Oilers franchise history
• 3rd Points per game, NHL history (1.537)

Honors

• 3× Hart Memorial Trophy (2017, 2021, 2023)
• 6× Art Ross Trophy (2017, 2018, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2026)
• 2024 Conn Smythe Trophy
• 5× Ted Lindsay Award
• 2023 Maurice Richard Trophy (64 goals)
• 1st overall pick, 2015 NHL Draft
• Oilers captain since 2016 (youngest in NHL history)

Per Hockey-Reference and the Oilers franchise leaderboards, through the 2025-26 season.

The arguments

Where he ranks all-time. McDavid’s career points-per-game rate of 1.537 sits third in NHL history, behind only Gretzky and Lemieux, and that leaderboard is the backbone of the case that he is the best player of the post-2000 era. Skeptics counter that rate statistics flatter a player who has, through 2026, logged fewer than 800 games, and that the all-time conversation belongs to players who sustained dominance across far longer careers. Both sides agree the ceiling is historic; they disagree on how much the sample still has to prove.

Does the Cup define him? The sharpest debate concerns the championship he has not won. One camp holds that back-to-back Final appearances in 2024 and 2025, plus a Conn Smythe Trophy earned in defeat, show the team fell short around him rather than because of him. The other argues that the greatest players are ultimately measured by titles, and that two Final losses to the same Florida team — followed by a first-round exit in 2026 — leave a gap no individual trophy fills.

The 2026 MVP vote. McDavid led the league in scoring in 2025-26 yet lost the Hart Trophy to Nikita Kucherov by ten voting points. Supporters saw a scoring champion denied; voters who favored Kucherov pointed to value relative to team and roster context. The margin itself became the argument.

Why it matters

Connor McDavid matters because he compressed a generation’s worth of offensive dominance into a single decade and forced hockey to measure him against its two most untouchable names. Through the 2025-26 season he stood second in Oilers history in points and assists, third all-time in scoring rate, and first among active players in nearly every conversation about raw talent. The remaining question — whether the Cup arrives before his prime ends — is the one storyline his individual record cannot settle on its own, and it is the reason every Edmonton season he plays carries the weight of a referendum.