After a dominant 132-point season capped off by a 42-point playoff run, there is no question that Connor McDavid is one of the most talented hockey players to ever play the sport. At just 27 years old, McDavid is already closing in on 1,000 points. After the conclusion of the 2023-24 season, McDavid currently has 982 points in 645 career regular season games. There is a good chance that he can become the third-fastest player to reach 1,000 points in NHL history.
McDavid has a very impressive 1.52 points-per-game rate in his career and with only 18 points left to hit the big milestone, that is a projected pace of 12 games to hit 1,000 points. How does that stack up against the fastest players to ever do it?
Fastest Players to 1,000 Career Points
To the surprise of nobody, Wayne Gretzky was the fastest player to reach 1,000 career points, and he did that in 424 games. While this list is only looking at the first 1,000 points of a career, Gretzky’s next 1,000 points would be the second-fastest on this list as it only took him another 433 games to reach 2,000.
After Gretzky come Mario Lemieux. It took Lemieux just 513 games to reach the 1,000-point milestone. Those top two spots will likely never be touched. Here are the 10 fastest players to reach the milestone:
| 1st | Wayne Gretzky | 424 |
| 2nd | Mario Lemieux | 513 |
| 3rd | Mike Bossy | 656 |
| 4th | Peter Stastny | 682 |
| 5th | Jari Kurri | 716 |
| 6th | Guy Lafleur | 720 |
| 7th | Bryan Trottier | 726 |
| 8th | Denis Savard | 727 |
| 9th | Steve Yzerman | 737 |
| 10th | Marcel Dionne | 740 |
If McDavid continues his career pace for point-scoring, he would end up fourth on the list at 657 games. McDavid does tend to start the season strong and over the last five seasons he has hit the 18-point mark before 12 games four times. Here is the number for each season:
Even with last season taking 17 games to get there, that is still over a point per game, and having the rest of the last five years being under the 12-game mark, it would be a safe bet to assume he will do it in fewer than 12 games and will end up at least tying Mike Bossy for third place.
McDavid is a lock to be at least fourth. McDavid would need to take 37 games to hit 12 points, and that has never happened in his career. The only question is, does he do it fast enough to beat out Bossy?
McDavid Miles Ahead of Active Players
Among the active players in the NHL, Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Alex Ovechkin are the three fastest players to hit the 1,000-point mark.
Crosby did it in 757 games, Malkin in 848, and Ovechkin in 880.
McDavid is talked about as one of the all-time greats already, and there is an argument to be had between him and Crosby as the greatest of this generation. While Crosby has more team success, which is certainly a key factor when analyzing a player’s career, McDavid’s individual trophy case is more impressive and he is 10 years younger. If McDavid can hit 1,000 career points in 100 fewer games than Crosby did, that would be a huge testament to how great McDavid is offensively. There have only been a handful of players to have numbers this impressive.
On top of this race to 1,000 points, McDavid also became the fourth player ever to record 100 assists in a season, one of six players to ever score 150 points in a season, and beat Gretzky’s record for the most assists in a playoff year with 34.
McDavid is a special player, and at just 27 years old, he could push even more all-time records than anybody thought was possible. McDavid seems to get better every season, and setting salary cap-era records, he is on track to being one of the greatest players in NHL history.
