McDavid and Draisaitl among NHL’s elite playoff performers

Leon Draisaitl, Connor McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins each skated in their 50th career playoff games last night. They are among the 1,271 players in NHL history to play at least 50 NHL games, but they rank much higher in points and points per game (PPG).

Nugent-Hopkins has 40 points in 50 playoff games. Among those with 50 GP, he ranks 513th in points, but he is 129th in PPG at 0.80.

Draisaitl sits 174th in points with 79, but he is fourth in PPG at 1.58.

McDavid currently sits 169th in points with 80 and he is third in PPG at 1.60.

McDavid and Draisaitl are among the elite of the elite in playoff production through their first 50 games. Here’s the list of players with at least 65 points in their first 50 playoff games.

McDavid and Draisaitl trail only Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux. They are ahead of many of the greatest players of all time and young fans have been able to watch five of the most productive playoff performers since 2006 in McDavid, Draisaitl, Nathan MacKinnon, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.

Draisaitl and McDavid are also top-15 in most playoff goals through 50 games.

McDavid and Draisaitl have proven they can produce at the most important time of the year, and currently seven of the top-20 in points/game in NHL history are active players.

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 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.

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