Edmonton Oilers captain is producing at an incredible pace.
Edmonton Oilers captain is producing at an incredible pace.
EDMONTON -- No one is better at racking up assists this season than Connor McDavid. The Edmonton Oilers captain leads the league with 72 helpers. Two of those came last night against the St. Louis Blues.
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The next closest player is Nikita Kucherov with 65 - seven less assists and five more games played. He's on pace for 107 assists. The last time someone had that many assists in a season was Joe Thornton, who had two back-to-back 90+ assist seasons (2005-06 & 2006-07).
The last time a player had over 100 assists was in 1990-91 when Wayne Gretzky notched 122 helpers.
Since McDavid entered the league in 2015-16 no one comes close to the number of assists he has. To date he has 619 assists while the next closest is Artemi Panarin with 492. The third highest in that time is McDavid's teammate, Leon Draisaitl (with 475 assists).
Only three players have ever scored more than 100 assists in a season - Bobby Orr, Mario Lemieux and the aforementioned Gretzky. That's some incredible company to keep for a player who just turned 27 on January 13th.
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