Name a team with a better Mount Rushmore of centres. Simply put, you cannot.
This is a four-part series looking at the four best players in team history from the four positions: Wingers, Centres, Defencemen, and Goaltenders. In this article, we’ll look at the Mount Rushmore of Oilers Wingers and some honourable mentions who deserve recognition.
Let’s dig in!

Wayne Gretzky

The great one.
Gretzky started his career with the Edmonton Oilers in their final season in the World Hockey Association, where he scored 43 goals and 104 points in 72 games as an 18-year-old. That season also saw him score three goals and six points in eight games with the Indianapolis Racers.
As a 19-year-old, Gretzky won the Hart Trophy, scoring 51 goals and 137 points in 79 games. This started a stretch of seven straight seasons of Gretzky winning the league’s MVP. One of these seasons, he scored 92 goals, an unbeatable record.
In fact, most of Gretzky’s records are unbeatable. No one is touching his 163 assists in a season. No one is touching his 2,857 career points. No one is scoring three consecutive 200-point seasons. No one is reaching a 51-game point streak.
There is one beatable record, though, as Alexander Ovechkin is just 41 goals away from matching Gretzky’s career goal record.
With the Oilers, he scored 583 goals and 1669 points in 696 games, winning four Stanley Cups with the organization, before being traded to the Los Angeles Kings. There, he scored 246 goals and 918 points in 539 games. He had a brief tenure in St. Louis, before finishing his career with the New York Rangers from 1996-97 until the 1998-99 season.
There’ll never be a player who puts up points like Gretzky did. That’s why he’s the great one.

Mark Messier

In the third round of the 1979 NHL Draft, the Edmonton Oilers selected Gretzky’s former Racers teammate, Mark Messier.
What a selection that turned out to be, as Messier is regarded as one of the best players in the history of the game. In 12 years with the Oilers, Messier scored 392 goals and 1034 points in 851 games, along with helping win all five Stanley Cups the organization has.
Before the start of the 1991-92 season, Messier was traded to the New York Rangers for a package that included current Oilers colour commentator, Louie DeBrusk. In Messier’s first two seasons with the Original Six team, he scored 60 goals and 198 points in 154 games. In 1993-94, he scored 26 goals and 84 points in 76 games, winning his sixth and final Stanley Cup. Overall, he finished his first Rangers tenure with 183 goals and 518 points in 421 games.
After a reunion season with Gretzky in 1996-97, the 36-year-old Messier departed the Big Apple to join the Vancouver Canucks, spending three seasons with Canada’s westernmost team. Messier missed the postseason in all three seasons, scoring just 52 goals and 162 points in 207 games. Prior to the beginning of the 2000-01 season, he returned to the Rangers, where he spent the final four seasons of his career with no postseason action.
Messier’s 1,887 points are the third-most for any player to ever play the game. He held second place when he retired, but Jaromír Jágr surpassed him while playing with the Florida Panthers in 2016. It’s worth noting that the 52-year-old Jágr is still playing.
The Moose was a terrific captain and absolutely deserves a spot on Edmonton’s Mount Rushmore, maybe even the NHL’s Mount Rushmore.

Connor McDavid

Personally, I never saw Gretzky play, as he retired before I turned a year old. I don’t remember Messier playing either. My generation instead has the next two players on the list, one of which is Connor McDavid.
What can you say about McDavid that hasn’t already been said? The 27-year-old is the most dominant force in the league since Gretzky. The game has changed a lot, and he won’t put up Gretzky-like points, but he may well go down as the best player to ever play.
In only two of his nine seasons has McDavid failed to reach 100 points. In his rookie season, he was over point-per-game, but missed a large portion of the season with a broken clavicle. He also missed a few weeks during the 2019-20 season, the same season that was cut short thanks to the COVID pandemic. He fell three points shy of reaching 100.
Other than those two seasons, McDavid is pretty much automatic in reaching 100 points, but he really took it to another gear in 2020-21 in the COVID-shortened season. In just 56 games, McDavid scored 33 goals and 105 points, or 1.88 points-per-game. That’s only the 23rd-highest PPG in NHL history, but it’s the highest since the turn of the millennium.
 McDavid recorded a career-high 44 goals and 123 points in 2021-22, along with ten goals and 33 points in 16 postseason games. The following season was a career year, scoring an incredible 64 goals and 153 points in 82 games, along with eight goals and 20 points in the postseason.
This past season, he only scored 32 goals, but became just the fourth player to reach 100 assists in a single season. Nikita Kucherov also reached that milestone, but McDavid nearly matched one of Gretzky’s “unbeatable” records.
In Edmonton’s run to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, McDavid scored eight goals and 42 points in 25 games, becoming just the second skater in history to win the Conn Smythe on the losing team. He also fell just five points shy of matching Gretzky’s 47 postseason points during the 1984-85 season.
McDavid is still in his prime, and deserves a Stanley Cup. Hopefully, the 2024-25 season is the year.

Leon Draisaitl

On the majority of the teams in the league, Leon Draisaitl would be pacing to be the best player in franchise history, but not on the Edmonton Oilers. Like Mark Messier, the German-born Draisaitl’s career has been overshadowed by and benefited from a generational talent.
Selected third overall in the 2014 draft, Draisaitl scored 347 goals and 850 points in 719 games with the Oilers. He’s reached the 50-goal plateau three times in his career, as well as the 100-point plateau five times. Since breaking out in the 2018-19 season, Draisaitl has failed to hit 100 points once since, coming in the 2020-21 season (where he had 31 goals and 84 points in 56 games).
However, Draisaitl excels best in the postseason. His first taste of playoff action in the 2017 postseason saw him score six goals and 16 points in 13 games. Ignoring the two four-game series in 2020 and 2021 (where he still scored five goals and 11 points), Draisaitl has been nothing short of amazing since the 2022 postseason.Despite playing through a high-ankle sprain suffered in the first round, Draisaitl scored seven goals and 32 points in 16 games. In the next postseason, Draisaitl scored 13 goals and 18 points in 12 games before scoring another ten goals and 31 points in 25 games during the 2024 run.
Draisaitl became the third-fastest player to reach 100 postseason points during the second round of the most recent postseason. So far, in 74 postseason games, Draisaitl has scored at a 1.33 PPG pace. He just gets it done.

Honourable mentions:

In this section, we’ll look at a handful of centres who didn’t make the cut, and I mean, how could they with four world-class players?

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins

When it’s all said and done, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins will have the franchise record in games played before the end of his contract (if he can stay healthy).
In 881 games with the Oilers, Nugent-Hopkins has 251 goals and 699 points, along with 17 goals and 61 points in 74 postseason games. He was Edmonton’s second-straight first-overall pick, as they selected him in 2011. Moreover, he’s the longest-serving Oiler on the current roster.
Nugent-Hopkins had a terrific 2022-23 season, scoring 37 goals and 104 points in 82 games, along with one goal and 11 points in 12 postseason games. Keep Nuge Forever.

Sam Gagner

Selected sixth overall by the Oilers in the 2007 draft, Gagner quickly became a fan favourite and remains so even to this day. In his first stint with the Oilers, the centre scored 101 goals and 295 points in 481 games. Eight of those points came in the same game against the Chicago Blackhawks during a random February game in 2012. However, the Oilers traded him to the Tampa Bay Lightning for Teddy Purcell during the 2014 off-season.
Gagner bounced around the league for a handful of seasons, even scoring a career-high 18 goals and 50 points in 2016-17 with the Columbus Blue Jackets. He found his way back to the Oilers during the 2018-19 season, scoring 10 goals and 22 points in 61 games before the Oilers traded him to the Detroit Red Wings before the 2020 trade deadline.
The fan-favourite spent two seasons with the Wings, before a season with the Winnipeg Jets in 2022-23. Before the start of the 2023-24 season, Gagner signed a professional tryout and eventually made the Oilers, scoring five goals and 10 points in 28 games.
Despite signing with the Carolina Hurricanes on a professional tryout, we all know deep down that Gagner will have a fourth stint with the Oilers sometime soon. 

Shawn Horcoff

The Oilers selected Shawn Horcoff in the fourth round of the 1998 draft. Starting his career in the 2000-01 season, Horcoff amassed 162 goals and 447 points in 796 games with the Oilers. This included his career-year during the 2005-06 season, where he scored 22 goals and 73 points in 79 goals, following it up with seven goals and 19 points in 24 postseason games.
Prior to the 2010-11 season, Horcoff was named the 15th captain in Oilers’ history (13th since joining the National Hockey League). He played three more seasons with the team, before they traded him to the Dallas Stars for Philip Larsen and a seventh-round pick in the 2016 draft.
Horcoff played two seasons with the Stars before ending his career in 2015-16 with the Anaheim Ducks. The Trail, British Columbia native now serves as the Detroit Red Wings’ assistant general manager and the general manager of their American Hockey League team.

Doug Weight

In Mar. 1993, the Oilers traded Esa Tikkanen to the New York Rangers in exchange for Doug Weight. Spending parts of nine seasons with the Oilers, Weight scored 157 goals and 577 points in 588 games with the team. Moreover, he had ten goals and 33 points in 39 postseason appearances with the team.
Weight became the captain of the Oilers prior to the 1999-2000 season before being traded to the St. Louis Blues at the start of the 2001 off-season due to Edmonton’s long-lasting financial problems.
Post-Oilers career, Weight had two stints with the Blues, split in half when he won the Stanley Cup with the Carolina Hurricanes in the 2006 postseason, against his former team, of course. Weight played half a season with the Anaheim Ducks, before ending his career with the New York Islanders, serving as the captain for the final two seasons. Preceding him as the Islanders’ captain was former Oiler, Bill Guerin, who played with Weight in 1997-98 and 1998-99.
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