Why doesn’t Oilers’ McDavid score like he used to? – Hockey Writer – Edmonton Oilers
Edmonton Oilers superstar captain Connor McDavid is almost above reproach in oil country, and understandably so.
Since being selected with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2015 NHL Draft, McDavid has won the Art Ross Trophy five times, the Hart Memorial Trophy three times and the Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy once as the league’s scoring leader. He has led the Oilers to the Stanley Cup Finals each of the past two years and has them within one game of winning the title in 2024.
He’s been committed to Edmonton for a decade, trying to bring hockey’s greatest trophy to a city hungry for the Stanley Cup. He recently signed a two-year contract extension that pays less than he expected, giving the Oilers more cap space to build a championship-caliber roster.
Most people in McDavid’s situation wouldn’t do that. Others may decide to take their talents elsewhere: perhaps somewhere more glamorous or warmer, or somewhere other than a 24-7 hockey fishbowl where they can exist in relative anonymity. Or maybe they’ll go where the money is.
But McDavid remains in Edmonton through at least 2027-28, and he’s staying at a discount. For these reasons alone, he deserves incredible admiration and praise.
However, having said that, we have to ask the question: what exactly happened to McDavid’s goal output?
McDavid is the NHL’s leading goal scorer in the 2022-23 season
In the 2022-23 season, McDavid leads the NHL with 64 goals, which is the most goals scored in a single season since Alexander Ovechkin lit up 65 goals in the 2007-08 season. In the process, he joined one of hockey’s most exclusive clubs, becoming the 23rdRD The player in league history who scored 60 goals in a single season.
This is McDavid’s sixth consecutive season averaging at least 0.5 goals per game and the fourth time in that span that he has scored more than 40 goals.
McDavid has already surpassed 300 goals in his NHL career at the age of 26 and looks set to be a scoring machine for years to come. The question isn’t whether he will win the Rocket Richard Trophy again, but how many more times he can lead the NHL in goals. At the very least, a sustained 40-goal campaign seems certain. But that’s not the case.
McDavid’s production plummets
In the 2023-24 season, McDavid scored 32 goals in 76 games (0.42 goals per game), which was his lowest goal total and average since the 2016-17 season. Then, last season, McDavid scored just 26 goals in 67 games (0.39 goals per game), his fewest since he was a rookie in 2015-16.
Now, he has just three goals in 13 games into the 2025-26 season, his worst start to the season. As of Monday (Nov. 8), 117 NHL players have more goals than McDavid, including former Oilers teammates Connor Brown, Corey Perry and Jeff Skinner.
To put it in perspective, McDavid’s decline is that he has fewer goals (61) over the past two-plus seasons (2023-24 to 2025-26) than he did in 2022-23. He hasn’t scored a hat trick in more than three years (the last coming on Oct. 27, 2022 against the Chicago Blackhawks), he hasn’t scored a game-winning goal in the regular season since Jan. 13, and his last goal in 3-on-3 overtime — which should be his playground — came in February 2024.
Oilers find success despite less McDavid scoring
McDavid’s postseason field goals have also dropped significantly. In his first five Stanley Cup playoff trips, with the Oilers advancing to the second round twice, reaching the Western Conference Finals once and being eliminated in the first-round series twice, McDavid scored 29 goals in 49 games, averaging 0.59 goals per game. In 2024 and 2025, when the Oilers reached consecutive NHL finals, he scored 15 goals in 47 games, averaging 0.32 goals per game.
Interestingly, McDavid’s scoring decline coincided with the Oilers reaching the highest point of his NHL career. Which raises the question: Does the team need him to be a 40-goal scorer?
McDavid remains an elite playmaker, averaging over an assist per game. After dishing out three assists in Edmonton’s 3-2 overtime win over Chicago on Saturday (Nov. 1), he has 14 apples this season, tied for third in the NHL.
RELATED: 3 takeaways from Oilers’ 3-2 overtime win over Blackhawks
Since the start of the 2023-24 season, McDavid has sent 188 assists in 156 games, averaging 1.21 assists per game. This rate is even higher in the playoffs, as in the 2024 and 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs, McDavid has 60 assists in 47 games (1.28 per game).
Championships are all McDavid cares about. This is what everyone involved with the Oilers and the fans of the team are concerned about. So as long as he can hoist the Stanley Cup in June, it doesn’t matter whether he scores once or 100 times.
But that doesn’t answer the question of why McDavid suddenly can’t score as often as he once did. It’s a question that should be asked, and a fair one, if he’s to be included in the conversation with the greatest players in hockey history and continue to be considered the best player on the planet today.
