This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Connor McDavid

One hundred and fifty-three points, and nineteen shots on goal from beyond forty feet all season.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2015-16	EDM	45	16	32	48	-1	18	3	0	5	105	15.2	18:53
2016-17	EDM	82	30	70	100	+27	26	3	1	6	251	11.9	21:08
2017-18	EDM	82	41	67	108	+20	26	5	1	7	274	15.0	21:33
2018-19	EDM	78	41	75	116	+3	20	9	1	9	240	17.1	22:50
2019-20	EDM	64	34	63	97	-6	28	11	0	6	212	16.0	21:52
2020-21	EDM	56	33	72	105	+21	20	9	0	11	200	16.5	22:09
2021-22	EDM	80	44	79	123	+28	45	10	0	9	314	14.0	22:04
2022-23	EDM	82	64	89	153	+22	36	21	4	11	352	18.2	22:23
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	569	303	547	850	+114	219	71	7	64	1948	15.6	21:45

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

64 goals and 89 assists in all 82 games — 153 points, and all three led the league. Plus-22, 22:23 a night, 352 shots at 18.2 per cent.

It is the first 150-point season in the National Hockey League since 1995-96.

57.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 94th percentile, with his ice at 75-62 against an expectation of 75.50-56.17. Exactly as the chances predicted at the offensive end, and six worse at the defensive one.

Read that carefully, because it is the season in one line: 153 points arrived with no finishing surplus at all. He was not lucky. He simply made more.

Eight seasons, 569 games, 850 points.

The Finesse Game

352 shots at a median of 19 feet, 52 per cent from inside twenty and 6 per cent from beyond forty.

From beyond forty feet he took nineteen shots on goal all season and scored two. That is the most concentrated close-range distribution of any high-volume shooter in this book: nobody who takes 350 shots takes so few of them from range.

Inside forty: 333 shots on goal, 63 goals, 18.92 per cent.

This book has spent an edition documenting how little the long shot returns. McDavid does not take it. The forty-foot split, applied to the best player in the world, finds a man who has already solved it.

88.9 mph at the 37th percentile — a below-average registered shot. The 64 goals come from where he shoots, not from how hard.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 194, and the tracking is what everyone expects and slightly different in the detail.

3.78 miles a game — second of the 574 skaters the feed covers, behind only Rasmus Dahlin. 6.50 bursts over twenty miles an hour a game, second in the league behind Nathan MacKinnon’s 7.69. Top speed 24.16 mph, which is the 99th percentile and is nevertheless only sixth-highest in the league.

That last figure is the useful one. Ryan Poehling registered a faster single reading than McDavid did. A tracked maximum is not a ranking of skaters, and the numbers that separate him are the ones about how often and how far, not how fast at his fastest.

36 penalty minutes in 82 games. He plays through an enormous amount of contact and initiates very little of it.

The Intangibles

First overall in 2015, three Harts, five scoring titles, and captain at 19.

Edmonton scored 325 goals last season, the most in the league, on a finishing rating of plus-2.9 and goaltending of minus-4.3. They led the league in scoring without any percentage help at all, which is the opposite of how Boston built 65 wins, and it is the strongest evidence available that this club’s offence is real.

They lost in the second round. Seven of his eight seasons have now ended before the Conference Final, and it is the only argument left against him.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
66.9% of his attempts in the slot, 92nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
57.3% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 51.2% for his club in the minutes he sat: +6.1, 93rd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
16:14 a game at five-on-five, 99th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
edgesa strength· changes direction at speed; the forechecker commits and he is gone
“6.50 bursts over twenty miles an hour a game, second in the league behind Nathan MacKinnon's 7.69.”
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“the numbers that separate him are the ones about how often and how far, not how fast at his fastest”
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“64 goals and 89 assists in all 82 games — 153 points, and all three led the league.”
leadershipa strength· the room, and who holds it
“three Harts, five scoring titles, and captain at 19”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,331 minutes

Expected goals: 57.3%; 94th pct
Shot attempts: 54.1%; 86th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 75 for, 62 against. Expected: 75.5 and 56.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

100th

Numbers

94th

The two rank him within 6 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.

Both bars are percentiles among the 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 87 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2022-23 · 82 games

Top speed: 24.2 mph; 100th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 6.50 a game
Distance: 3.78 miles a game
Hardest shot: 88.9 mph; 62nd pct

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Usual linemates

2022-23 · 1331 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2022-23

The club: EDM took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 57.3% — 3.8 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,331 minutes at five-on-five — 92nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Zach Hyman	58.9%	54.8%	48.8%
Darnell Nurse	55.8%	58.4%	50.0%
Cody Ceci	54.6%	58.9%	48.2%

58.9% together, 54.8% for him apart and 48.8% for Hyman apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

441 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 65 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 53% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.