Coming off a dominating season with 132 points and 42 playoff points, Connor McDavid is undoubtedly one of the most talented players in the history of the sport. At just 27 years old, McDavid is already closing in on 1,000 points. After the 2023-24 season, McDavid will have 982 career points in 645 regular season games. There's a good chance he'll become the third-fastest player in NHL history to reach 1,000 points.
McDavid is currently averaging an impressive 1.52 points per game for his career, and with just 18 points away from the milestone, he's on pace to reach 1,000 points in 12 games. How does this compare to the fastest players in history to reach 1,000 points?
Fastest player to reach 1,000 career points
To the surprise of no one, Wayne Gretzky was the fastest player to reach 1,000 career points, doing so in 424 games. While this list only considers the first 1,000 points of a career, Gretzky's next 1,000 points made him the second-fastest on this list, taking just 433 more games to reach 2,000 points.
Next behind Gretzky is Mario Lemieux, who reached the 1,000-point milestone in just 513 games. The top two spots will likely never be taken. Here are the 10 players who reached the milestone the fastest:
| First place | Wayne Gretzky | 424 |
| The second | Mario Lemieux | 513 |
| 3rd place | Mike Bossy | 656 |
| 4th | Peter Stastny | 682 |
| No.5 | Yari Kurri | 716 |
| No.6 | Guy Lafleur | 720 |
| The 7th | Bryan Trottier | 726 |
| The 8th | Dennis Savard | 727 |
| The 9th | Steve Yzerman | 737 |
| The 10th | Marcel Dionne | 740 |
If McDavid maintains his career scoring pace, he will rank fourth in all games scored with 657 games played. McDavid tends to start the season well, scoring 18 points before the 12th game four times in the past five seasons. Here are his scoring results for each season:
- 2023-24 – 17 matches
- 2022-23 – 9 matches
- 2021-22 – 9 games
- 2020-21 – 11 matches
- 2019-20 – 11 matches
It took him 17 games to get there last season, but that was still over a point per game, and considering the rest of the past five years were under 12 games, it's safe to expect him to get it in under 12 games and at least finish in a tie for third place with Mike Bossy.
McDavid is a sure bet to finish at least fourth. It would take McDavid 37 games to reach 12 points, something he's never done in his career. The only question is whether he can do it quickly enough to beat Bossy.
McDavid leads current players by a long way
Among active NHL players, Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Alex Ovechkin are the three fastest players to reach the 1,000-point milestone.
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Crosby achieved this feat in 757 games, Malkin in 848 and Ovechkin in 880.
McDavid is already being talked about as one of the best players of all time, and there is a debate as to whether he or Crosby is the best player of this generation. Crosby has won because of his team success, which is certainly an important factor in analyzing a player's career, but McDavid's individual trophy haul is more impressive, and he is 10 years younger than Crosby. If McDavid could earn 1,000 career points in 100 fewer games than Crosby, it would be a huge testament to how good McDavid's offensive power is. Only a handful of players have put up numbers that are that impressive.
In addition to his quest for 1,000 points, McDavid became just the fourth player in NBA history to record 100 assists in a season and one of six players to record 150 points in a season, surpassing Gretzky's record of 34 assists in one playoff season.
McDavid is a special player and has the potential to break more records than anyone thought possible at just 27 years old. McDavid seems to get better every season and is on his way to breaking records in the salary cap era and becoming one of the best players in NHL history.
