McDavid and Draisaitl among NHL’s elite playoff performers

Sidney Crosby and Nikita Kucherov have played significantly more games, and the longer you play usually your PPG goes down, but as noted above McDavid and Draisaitl are off to amazing starts. They will need a few deep playoff runs if they want to get into the top 50 in points. Bobby Hull is 50th with 129 playoff points. Alex Ovechkin is currently 38th with 141 points, Kucherov is 22nd with 161, Evgeni Malkin is 14th with 180 and Crosby is 5th with 201.

McDAVID HITS ANOTHER MILESTONE…

McDavid joined another rare group last night. He became the 14th player in NHL history with five assists in a playoff game.

Mikko Leinonen (in 1982) and Gretzky (1987) had six assists in a game once, while Toe Blake (1944) Maurice Richard (1956), Bert Olmstead (1957), Don McKenney (1958), Stan Mikita (1973), Gretzky (1981), Paul Coffey (1985), Doug Gilmour (1986), Risto Siltanen (1987), Glenn Anderson (1987), Patrik Sundstrom (1988) and Geoff Courtnall (1998) each did it once.

McDavid and Courtnall are the only players to do it in the past 35 seasons.

Leinonen has to have had the most unexpected one-game outburst in NHL playoff history. He produced six assists in his second-career playoff game with the Rangers v. Philly in 1982. He had five assists and two goals in his other 19 playoff games. You could have your friends waste many hours trying to figure out who was the player, alongside Gretzky, with six assists in a playoff game.