How Connor McDavid is putting together the best single season of the salary-cap era

Playing in the NHL isn’t easy, but Connor McDavid makes it look that way. He is steamrolling the rest of the league every night at this point, and he is on pace to put up numbers that haven’t been seen in almost three decades.

McDavid, the man who has turned several major award races into snooze fests, has set new career highs in goals (54) and points (124) with 17 games remaining in the regular season. It’s only a matter of time until he records his 80th assist to set a new career high in that category as well.

But it’s not just about McDavid setting new personal highs anymore.

He is on track to produce the best regular season of the salary cap era, with 68 goals, 88 assists and 156 points. If McDavid hits those projections, Nikita Kucherov’s 128-point season in 2018-19 would be the only other one in the same zip code.

If McDavid does continue to score at this eye-popping rate, his 156 points would be the 14th highest-scoring season in NHL history. The last time the NHL saw numbers like that was in 1995-96, when Mario Lemieux tallied 69 goals, 92 points, and 161 points en route to winning the Hart Trophy.

*projected

McDavid has already established himself as the best player in the NHL right now. That has been the case for several years now. The 2022-23 season is the sixth one in which McDavid has eclipsed the 100-point mark, and he tallied 97 points in 64 games in the pandemic-shortened 2019-20 campaign.

The bar was already astronomically high for McDavid coming into the season, but he has surpassed it with ease anyway. The difference  is that McDavid has evolved his game to become the game’s best goal-scorer, in addition to being an elite distributor.

With 20% of the season still remaining, McDavid has smashed his previous career high in goals (44) and is dominating the Rocket Richard Trophy race. David Pastrnak, who is having a ridiculous season in his own right, is still 10 tallies behind McDavid in second place.

This may not come as much of a shock, but McDavid has always lit the lamp at a high rate. Since the 2016-17 season, McDavid has scored at least 30 goals every year, and he has scored at least 40 goals four times. Even on a per-shot basis, McDavid has found the back of the net frequently with a career shooting percentage of 15.6%.

What has made McDavid’s 2022-23 season so special is that he has put an emphasis on pulling the trigger more often. Take a look at McDavid’s shot totals throughout his career.

• 2015-16: 105 shots (2.33 shots per game)
• 2016-17: 251 shots (3.06 shots per game)
• 2017-18: 274 shots (3.34 shots per game)
• 2018-19: 240 shots (3.08 shots per game)
• 2019-20: 212 shots (3.13 shots per game)
• 2020-21: 200 shots (3.57 shots per game)
• 2021-22: 314 shots (3.93 shots per game)
• 2022-23: 288 shots (4.43 shots per game)

In the last couple of seasons, McDavid has been more willing to let shots fly, but he has really taken that to another level this year. Perhaps the most impressive part of all of this is that McDavid’s newfound love of shot quantity hasn’t affected his shot quality.

McDavid is still getting high-quality chances from the middle of the slot and directly in front of the net, and his shooting percentage is actually a career high 18.8%. While some small part of this scoring binge is due to shooting luck, it’s no surprise that when the best player in the world takes more quality shots, he scores more often.

Due to his recent uptick in shooting — and scoring — McDavid will need to bring an extra suitcase to the NHL awards in June. He will take home the Hart Trophy and the Art Ross Trophy, while also capturing his first Rocket Richard Trophy as the league’s leading goal-scorer.

The only thing that could make this season even sweeter for McDavid is bringing the Stanley Cup home to Edmonton, and if he continues to play like this, there’s no reason the Oilers can’t hang their first banner since 1990.