Greg Wyshynski
EDMONTON, Alberta — Mark Messier and Wayne Gretzky are the two highest-scoring players in Stanley Cup playoffs history. But Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl just passed the Edmonton Oilers‘ dynastic duo in the NHL record books for one particular achievement.
“They’re the best players of their generation,” said Messier, who is second (295 points in 236 games) to Gretzky (382 points in 208 games) in all-time postseason scoring.
Gretzky and Messier had 28 playoff games in which they both scored multiple points. Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final on Friday against the Florida Panthers was the 29th game in which McDavid (three assists) and Draisaitl (goal, assist) both had multiple points in a postseason game, passing Messier and The Great One.
They trail Gretzky and Glenn Anderson by one game for second all time in this category but will need some time to match Gretzky and linemate Jari Kurri, who had 44 multipoint games together with Edmonton and Los Angeles.
“It’s actually unbelievable for a franchise like Edmonton to have had the teams and the players that have come through there, Messier said. “There are NHL teams that have been around forever and never had a Bobby Orr or Mario Lemieux. For a team that had Gretzky to now have McDavid and Draisaitl is unbelievable.”
Of course, Messier was no slouch either. The Hockey Hall of Fame center is third in NHL history with 1,887 career points. He and Gretzky won four Stanley Cups together in Edmonton, before Messier won another with the Oilers after The Great One was traded to Los Angeles. They were the engine for those teams, with Gretzky (252 points) and Messier (215 points) as the first and second playoff scorers in Edmonton history. McDavid (148 points in 92 games) is fifth, while Draisaitl (137 in 92 games) is sixth.
McDavid and Draisaitl eclipsing an achievement by Gretzky and Messier is poetic. Both sets of stars were the first- and second-line centers on the Oilers. All of them have been NHL MVPs. The current Edmonton standard-bearers are trying to bring the first Stanley Cup to the city since the Oilers’ dynasty ended in 1990.
“They’ve been in this organization for a long time now. Two of the best players in the world. Everyone knows how much they mean to the Oilers,” said their goalie, Stuart Skinner, who grew up in Edmonton as an Oilers fan.
Draisaitl was drafted third in 2014 by Edmonton behind defenseman Aaron Ekblad and center Sam Reinhart, both of whom are now on the Panthers. McDavid was the coveted first pick in 2015 whom Edmonton drafted after winning the lottery and moving up from No. 3.
McDavid and Draisaitl led the Oilers to the Stanley Cup Final last season and nearly rallied them from a 3-0 series deficit to the Panthers before losing in Game 7. McDavid finished with 42 points in 25 games. Draisaitl had 31 points in the same span.
This postseason, McDavid leads the playoffs with 31 points, while Draisaitl is second with 29 points.
Draisaitl has scored at least 10 goals in three straight postseasons, joining New York Islanders legend Mike Bossy (four from 1980 to 1993) and Gretzky (three from 1983 to 1985) as the only players to have done so.
This is McDavid’s third 30-point postseason, tying him with Messer for second-most all time behind Gretzky, who had six. Assuming Draisaitl gets to 30 points, it will also be his third 30-point postseason. Draisaitl’s next point will also set a new NHL record for him and McDavid: No other teammates in Stanley Cup playoffs history have had back-to-back 30-point postseasons.
Not even Gretzky and Messier.
“I think Oilers fans appreciate it because of the 1980s and then the long drought and now what they have with McDavid and Draisaitl,” Messier said. “There’s appreciation of their drive, work ethic, talent and determination to be the best. They’ve shown every one of those attributes.”
AT THE END of Game 1 of the Western Conference finals, as the Dallas Stars were celebrating a miraculous third-period comeback win, Draisaitl and McDavid simultaneously turned their heads to glance at each other on the Oilers bench.
The Oilers are 3-0 and have outscored Dallas 13-2 since this knowing glance pic.twitter.com/svRvq0MukK
— Mike Commito (@mikecommito) May 28, 2025
This became known on social media as “The Look.”
Fans marked time as everything that happened before “The Look” and everything that followed it. Namely that the Oilers won the next four games against Dallas, outscoring the Stars 19-5, and then won Game 1 of the Final.
While the internet bestowed gravitas to this brief but smoldering gaze, McDavid said he didn’t recall the moment. But he did confirm that, over the years, he and Draisaitl have developed some kind of telepathic communication.
“I think we’ve definitely developed a sense of understanding what the other one’s thinking in any given moment,” he said. “Sometimes, yeah, all it takes is a look to know what’s going on.”
The offense created when McDavid and Draisaitl are on the ice does speak to something extra sensory between them.
Heading into Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final on Monday night, McDavid and Draisaitl have now factored on the same goal 73 times in the playoffs. There are only three duos in NHL history that have factored in on the same goal more often:
In 43 games over the past two postseasons, Edmonton has scored 21 goals with McDavid and Draisaitl on the ice at 5-on-5, a rate of 4.4 goals per 60 minutes. When neither of them are on the ice, the Oilers have a 2.03 goals per 60 minutes rate at 5-on-5 in their past 43 games — although it should be noted that this season’s supporting cast has that rate up to 2.71 goals per 60 in the team’s past 18 games.
This postseason, McDavid and Draisaitl have an expected goals rate of 66.4%; when neither of them are on the ice at 5-on-5, the rest of the Oilers earn 49.6% of the expected goals, according to Natural Stat Trick. When Messier and Gretzky were teammates, the Oilers rarely put them on the same line.
“No, we played on separate lines for the most part. The power play, at times, but not all the time,” Messier said. “I centered the second line, and it was one of the reasons why we became so hard to play against.”
McDavid and Draisaitl have played 167:04 together at 5-on-5 in 18 games, more than McDavid (158:43) and Draisaitl (150:06) have played away from the other. Which is to say that coach Kris Knoblauch has not hesitated to unleash the “nuclear option” on opponents this postseason, uniting his two offensive wizards on the same line.
“We’ve done it throughout the playoffs, and they have just gone off and scored at a tremendous, tremendous rate,” Knoblauch said.
But the coach said he’s cognizant of the ripple effects caused by Draisaitl moving to McDavid’s wing.
“Leon playing center just spreads out our scoring a little bit. It also gets him in the game a little bit more. He’s skating and involved,” Knoblauch said. “I think it also allows the rest of our team knowing that they’ve got a role, they’ve got to play well and we’re not just relying on this one line that it’s going to do all the work.”
Of course, the Oilers are more than happy to rely on McDavid and Draisaitl as linemates on the power play. In 43 games over the past two postseasons, Edmonton has scored 34 goals with both of them on the ice for a power play. The Oilers have scored just once on the power play without McDavid and Draisaitl on the ice over the past two postseasons.
Draisaitl has 22 career power-play goals in 92 games, tying him for 29th all time. Only Hockey Hall of Fame winger Cam Neely (25 in 93 games) had more goals having played fewer than 100 career postseason games. Draisaitl enters Game 3 needing one power-play goal to tie Gretzky (23) for the most in Oilers history — and it took The Great One 120 games to amass that total.
Alex Ovechkin has the “Ovi Spot” on the power play. Leon has “Drai Island”: Draisaitl now has 73 power-play goals from the right circle on a one-timer in the regular season and the playoffs since the shot was first tracked in 2016-17. The next-highest player? Tampa Bay Lightning star Nikita Kucherov, way back at 44 goals.
McDavid remains Draisaitl’s biggest fan.
“You can’t put a number on it. He’s invaluable. There’s so many good things he does. You name it, he does it. And he doesn’t get enough credit for his defensive abilities,” McDavid said last week. “There’s not many — maybe nobody — better.”
Draisaitl has 10 power-play goals over the past two Oilers playoff runs. McDavid had the primary assist on seven of them. That includes his cross-ice feed to Draisaitl for the overtime winner in Game 1 and that highlight-reel individual effort to feed him for a goal in Game 2 when McDavid deked Aleksander Barkov and Aaron Ekblad out of their respective skates:
Those power-play helpers are one reason McDavid has moved up the ranks of the most multi-assist games in NHL postseason history. Heading into Game 3, he has 33 career multi-assist playoff games, the third-most behind Oilers legends Gretzky (72) and Messier (40).
“They’re the best at almost all aspects of the game,” Oilers winger Jeff Skinner said. “They are dominant every night, and that gives them the confidence to keep doing it.”
Which is to say that opponents, such as the Panthers, can only hope to mitigate the damage that McDavid and Draisaitl will inevitably do.
IN GAME 1 of the Stanley Cup Final, Florida iced the puck 21 times. Occasionally, it was its fourth line that was guilty of the infraction. When that would happen and the Panthers were forced to take a faceoff back in their own zone, Knoblauch wouldn’t hesitate to put McDavid and Draisaitl out there together to prey on them.
When that happened, Panthers fourth-line winger Jonah Gadjovich knew what to do — let someone else handle them as quickly as possible.
“Play hard. Get off the ice as quick as you can. Get the puck out and get off. That’s what we’re trying to do,” he said.
Defending McDavid is hard. Defending McDavid and Draisaitl is terrifying, even for Barkov, considered the best defensive forward in the NHL.
“You just have to know that they’re on the ice. You have to be aware of them all the times. You have to know a little bit of their tendencies as well,” said Barkov, a three-time winner of the Selke Trophy, including this season. “But at the same time, it’s five guys on ice. It’s not just one. So five guys need to know you need to know where they are and take the time and space away from it.”
That’s something Panthers defenseman Seth Jones echoed.
“When they play together, they’re obviously very creative players and they make everyone around them better. They like to look for each other, especially when they play together. Little give-and-goes, things like that,” he said. “Whether they’re playing together or apart, it’s a five-man unit, defending holdups, little things like that, just being physical on them is going to help us at the end of the day.”
But the Panthers aren’t playing the same McDavid and Draisaitl from last postseason. Both players were far from 100% in 2024, having played 13 playoff games in the last two rounds before the Stanley Cup Final. This time, they’re healthy and rested, having played 10 games in those rounds in two straight five-game series wins.
Both players have talked about how the postseason journey in 2024 changed them, in particular with their mental approach to this season’s Final. McDavid has talked about being more “comfortable” than last time, with the second time around feeling more normal.
Oilers forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who has been a linemate for both McDavid and Draisaitl in his career, praised their mental toughness.
“It speaks to their level of competitiveness, which is so impressive on a day-to-day basis that it pushes you,” he said. “They’re two of the most talented players that we’ve probably ever seen in the game, but there has to be more than that, and these guys have that. They’re so competitive. They want to win so bad.”
The numbers certainly back that up.
