Connor McDavid began the 2022-23 season with a bang as he recorded a hat trick and helped the Edmonton Oilers rally from a 3-0 deficit to win 5-3 against the Vancouver Canucks in Wednesday’s season opener. In the process, McDavid made history. He became the sixth-fastest player in NHL history to record 700 career points.
McDavid accomplished the feat in just 488 games. The only players in NHL history that reached the 700-point mark faster were Wayne Gretzky (317), Mario Lemieux (363), Peter Stastny (457), Mike Bossy (469) and Jari Kurri (483). Pittsburgh Penguins star Sidney Crosby also reached the 700-point plateau in just nine more games than it took McDavid.
McDavid has already pulled himself into fifth place on the Oilers’ all-time points list with 701 points, despite just entering his eighth NHL season. He only trails the likes of Gretzky (1,669), Kurri (1,043), Mark Messier (1,034) and Glenn Anderson (906) on the franchise leaderboard.
McDavid recorded his 700th career point on the eventual game-winning goal at the 15:01 mark of the third period when he got his own rebound and put the puck past Canucks goalie Thatcher Demko. McDavid added an empty-netter in the final minute to ice the game for the Oilers.
“It was just not a good start for our group. It was the first game and maybe there was a little bit of jitters,” McDavid said. “It is not going to be perfect every night. You are not going to have the game you want every night and sometimes you get a win with your ‘B’ or ‘C’ game. It was certainly not our ‘A’ game to start, but we found a way to get our legs going and get ourselves back in it.”
The Oilers found themselves trailing 3-0 after Canucks forwards Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller scored goals in the first 2:40 of the contest. In fact, the goals were just 51 seconds apart and set a franchise record for the fastest two goals to begin a season.
Just 39 seconds into the second period, Canucks winger Andrei Kuzmenko scored his first NHL goal to put Vancouver ahead 3-0.
However, the Oilers were able to score three goals to close out the second period. Leon Draisaitl and McDavid netted power-play goals while defenseman Darnell Nurse added a shorthanded tally to tie the game at 3-3 in the final minute of the second period.
