Exploring Connor McDavid's chances of ever reaching 200 points in an NHL season

While this is the time of year for bold NHL predictions, a wild take has been circulating regarding Connor McDavid.

In recent days, there have been multiple NHL commentators from Arda Ocal to Paul Bissonnette musing on the idea that McDavid could reach, or eclipse, 200 points in a single season.

On the surface, that seems difficult to fathom. The Edmonton Oilers superstar is coming off a 153-point campaign that was already one of the best the NHL has ever seen.

It topped his previous career-high by 20 points and McDavid turns 27 in January, suggesting that he is a finished product rather than a player likely to take a massive step forward. Sportsbooks tend to have his point total over/under for 2023-24 set in the mid-to-high 130s.

That means it seems safe to say that a 200-point campaign from McDavid is unlikely. But is it possible?

We don't have many examples to work off of. There have been just four 200-point seasons in NHL history — all from Wayne Gretzky. They all come from an era when scoring was a much more efficient business.

Gretzky posted massive shooting percentages, making it easier to manage lofty goal totals. In his four 200-point campaigns, Gretzky put the puck on net (4.46 shots/game) at a similar rate to McDavid's 2022-23 season (4.29 shots/game), but his shooting percentage was 21.7%.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, there have been just 24 instances of a player managing 328 or more shots (four per game) over an 82-game season. McDavid has the best shooting percentage of that group at 18.2% last season

Gretzky lit the lamp at a clip that doesn't seem possible in the modern game based on advancements in goaltending. Even during his NHL-record 215-point 1985-86 season, when Gretzky scored "just" 52 goals, he benefitted from shooting efficiency around him as linemate Jari Kurri shot 28.8% on the way to 68 markers.

We don't have on-ice shooting percentages from that era, but Gretzky's would've been absurd. Some of that was the result of his marvellous playmaking, but it's still worth remembering that the average save percentage in 1985-86 was .874 and teams scored 3.97 goals per game.

In his four 200-point seasons Gretzky was in on 49.7% of his team's goals. In McDavid's 2022-23 career year, he factored in on 47.1% of Edmonton's tallies.

That's not far off The Great One's pace, but McDavid seemed to push the boundaries of what's possible in 2022-23. It's tough to see obvious upside without becoming significantly more valuable to his own club's offense than Gretzky was.

To be fair, that has been done before.

Mario Lemieux's 199-point campaign in 1988-89 came in a season where his team scored just 347 goals — meaning he was in on 57.3% of them. That seems to provide hope for McDavid, but it contains some of the same currently unattainable ingredients. Lemieux had a shooting percentage of 27.2% that year, and the league average was 12.1%.

For McDavid to show us something we've never seen before, the offensive environment will have to change around him.

Last season was promising in that regard. Teams averaged their highest per-game goal total (3.18) since 1993-94 and the average save percentage dropped to its lowest level since 1999-00 (omitting a warped 2005-06 season when power plays spiked). That number (.904) was a .003 drop-off from 2021-22 — the largest decline since the mid-90s.

It is possible that the NHL game continues to open up in the years to come, but it would have to do so at a rapid pace to get meaningfully closer to the 1980s before McDavid's physical peak concludes.

Although it may seem silly to impose limitations on what the NHL's best player can do, there are only so many shots that can go on net, and we have a solid understanding of how many tend to go in.

McDavid's on-ice shooting percentage has never exceeded 15.1%, and there's no reason to believe it will suddenly skyrocket unless the game quickly evolves in an offense-friendly direction.

A 200-point season from the reigning Hart Trophy winner is not a literal impossibility, but there's no compelling reason to believe it will happen.