Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl are hockey titans in a world of mortals

Move over David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand, the Edmonton Oilers’ own Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl are lighting the league on fire at record pace.

It’s been strange to see the Edmonton Oilers remain as one of the teams at the top of the league in the 2019-20 NHL season. Though the Oilers have cooled off after a 7-1-0 start to the season — Edmonton’s record is 13-6-3 now after six weeks of play — the team sits comfortably in the top spot in the Pacific Division and is the NHL’s fifth best team in the league overall with Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid at the helm.

The Oilers, without a doubt, would not be where they are today without the combined efforts of top line forwards McDavid and Draisaitl. The pair are the NHL’s leading points producers this season, with Draisaitl putting up 43 points to McDavid’s 40 in 22 total games played.

Those numbers are staggering individually, but putting them in a bigger picture showcases just how insane this duo has been for the Oilers. Together, McDavid and Draisaitl have 83 points in 22 games for the Oilers. Edmonton, this season, has had 193 points scored by players this year, meaning that 43 percent of their points this season have come off of a play by McDavid or Draisaitl.

Nearly half of the Oilers points this season have been scored by McDavid or Draisaitl this season, meaning that if you took out their 83 points from Edmonton’s totals, they’d be dead last in the league. Of course, that’s not how the game of hockey works, but should lightning strike down and take out both the Oilers’ best forwards for the rest of the season tomorrow, Edmonton would be in trouble to say the least.

At this point in the season, Draisaitl and McDavid are on pace for a combined 309 points this season, a pace that would smash record books in the modern NHL era should it hold. Draisaitl himself is on pace for a 160-point season, a pace that would have him tied for 13th overall in the entire league’s history with Mario Lemieux‘s 1992-93 season. Nikita Kucherov‘s 128-point season from a year ago, the highest in the last 20 years, is already in jeopardy thanks to this pace.

It’s more than fair to say Draisaitl and McDavid are bound to cool off sometime this season. Draisaitl is averaging 1.95 points per game, with McDavid trailing behind at 1.82 points per game. It’s a pace that’s no where close to being sustainable, as no one in the NHL’s modern era has come close to it over a full season of play.

And yet, the magic of the McDavid-Draisaitl duo is infectious. The pair always seem to know where one another is on the ice, an incredible show of their chemistry in their young careers. McDavid is 23-years-old while Draisaitl is 24 and they have been the team’s top scorers for the last three seasons. It’s easy to believe the Oilers will have this one-two punch on their top line for at least 10 more years, if not longer.

Earlier on in the season, the Boston Bruins’ duo of Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak got much of the national attention for their blistering starts to the 2019-20 season. While the pair were hot in late October and early November during the Bruins’ six game win streak, Marchand has four points in his last six games while Pastrnak has three in his last six.

McDavid and Draisaitl have yet to hit that mid-season slide just yet, as Draisaitl has a point streak lasting 12 games while McDavid sits at a seven-game point streak as late November comes into view.

According to all known laws of modern hockey, the points will eventually stop coming as easily for McDavid and Draisaitl this season. No hockey player since the start of the salary cap era has come close to completing a season Draisaitl and McDavid are on pace for. The pair’s shooting percentages will dip as the season moves along and goalies will get better at defending their shots as competition tightens as the playoff races get closer.

And yet, it’s not hard to imagine a world where McDavid and Draisaitl continue to rack up the points given their otherworldly talents at playing hockey. They’re a hard pair to stop individually as history as shown, but together the duo of McDavid and Draisaitl are gods among men right now.