With just one game left tonight, Connor McDavid has officially won the Art Ross Trophy for the most points in the league, currently with 134 points. In second is Nikita Kucherov sitting at 130 points. With Nathan MacKinnon sitting out tonight, the Colorado Avalanche forward ended with 127 points, good for third in the race.
McDavid also sits first in assists (the fourth time in his career) with 86, and third in goals with 48 (his fifth 40-goal season).
Another record-breaking accolade
This is McDavid’s sixh Art Ross win, moving him past Jaromir Jagr and Phil Esposito, and he is now in a tie with Mario Lemieux and Gordie Howe for the second most of all time (Wayne Gretzky holds the record with 10).
This is the second-highest point total of McDavid’s career, and his third season with 130+ points, the fourth most seasons above that amount behind Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, and Phil Esposito.
This is also the seventh time in the last ten years that an Oiler has won the Art Ross, as Leon Draisaitl won it in 2019–20.
The path to the Art Ross
It’s a bit crazy that McDavid won it this year, considering that there was only one calendar month this year where he led the league in scoring, when he posted 34 points in just 15 games in December.
He was 24th in scoring at the end of October with 14 points in 12 games, but managed to move up to fourth by November 30 with 36 points in 26 games.
The above-mentioned December pushed him to a tie with Nathan MacKinnon for first, with 70 points in 41 games.
McDavid started to run away with the scoring lead from there, with 95 points at the end of January (four more than MacKinnon), 103 by the end of February (six more than MacKinnon), and then 125 by the end of March (four more than the new second-place Nikita Kucherov).
Granted, McDavid played seven more games than Nikita Kucherov, who had a ridiculous 79 points in 40 games in 2026. Kucherov had the highest points-per-game this season, and so it is likely that had he not missed those games, it would be Kucherov winning his fourth Art Ross, and third in a row.
But them’s the breaks, and so McDavid adds yet another accolade to his ever-growing resume.
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