Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of Edmonton Oilers’ remarkable playoff run in 2024 is their growing assault on the NHL record book.
The dynasty squad of the 1980s provided the franchise and its fans with a proud history, however their epic feats cast a very long shadow over future iterations of the Oilers. The club won the ultimate prize 5 times in a 7-year span; in the process, several of its individual members established a number of scoring records that have stood the test of time.
Until recently, that is. Thrice in recent times, twice in the last week alone, we have seen one of those records finally get toppled… by other Oilers. It’s a best case scenario for fans of the club.
Connor McDavid
All season long McDavid has been putting on a playmaking clinic. In the regular season he became just the third player in NHL history to reach the 100-assist mark, joining Wayne Gretzky (11 times!!) and the trailblazer Bobby Orr as the only NHLers to do so. Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov would macth McDavid’s century on the last day of the season.
Come the playoffs, McDavid has carried on setting up goals at a prodigious rate. In Edmonton’s 8-1 shellacking of Florida in Game 4, he scored once and recorded a trio of helpers, his 30th, 31st and 32nd of the postseason. In the process, he dislodged the Great Gretzky from the top of a different leaderboard.
Here’s the updated version of that list, including another pair of assists from McDavid’s 2-2-4 performance in Game 5:
The list is dominated by Oilers of 2 eras, 5 in all including 3 different players of the current team. Among them, they hold 8 of the top 10 playoff seasons all-time! Call it 8 of 12 if you prefer, it’s still absolutely staggering that one franchise could be so dominant. Only 3 other NHLers ever collected 25 apples, once each, while Gretzky did so yet a fifth time as an LA King.
Not every day nor even every decade that a Wayne Gretzky record gets taken down, especially in his top specialty of playmaking. In this case, the Great One held the top three spots on the list, all during his time with the Oilers and each in a Stanley Cup season. His 31st assist in 1988 topped his own 3-year-old mark and set yet another NHL record with his very last point as an Oiler. But now that legendary swan song has been eclipsed, by Edmonton’s modern scoring sensation.
It’s hard to compare the two phenoms who achieve/d their greatness through very different skill sets. Cam Cole, a superb sportswriter for the Edmonton Journal during the glory years (now retired), made a very good stab at it with this recent tweet:
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