Where the scoring race stands

After the first week of the 2026-27 season, Connor McDavid leads the NHL in points with 13 in five games, and the player closest to him is a defenceman on the same team.

The numbers come from the league's official statistics service, read on October 12, 2026.

McDavid has three goals and ten assists in five games, with a plus-minus of 12. Evan Bouchard, an Edmonton defenceman, has six goals and six assists in the same five games, also at plus-12.

That Bouchard is second is the unusual part. Defencemen rarely lead a league's goal-scoring group, and he has done it while averaging more ice time than McDavid: 24 minutes 52 seconds a game against 23:57.

The rest of the top group

Jack Eichel of Vegas sits third with 12 points in six games, on three goals and nine assists, including five points on the power play.

Sebastian Aho of Carolina has the most games of anyone in the top ten, seven, and 11 points from them, with six goals. He also has a shorthanded goal and three on the power play, and ten penalty minutes.

William Nylander of Toronto has 11 points in six games, and Auston Matthews has ten in six, including an overtime goal.

Nathan MacKinnon of Colorado has ten points in five games, five of them goals.

Leon Draisaitl, McDavid's teammate, has nine points in five games and is plus-9.

Kirill Kaprizov of Minnesota has eight points in five games, six of them goals, and Elias Pettersson of Vancouver has eight in seven, with no even-strength goals and two on the power play.

Why games played matter this early

Points totals separate the group more than points per game does, and at this stage of a season the difference is large enough to change the order.

McDavid's 2.60 points per game is the highest in the league. Bouchard is at 2.40, Eichel and MacKinnon are both at 2.00, Nylander is at 1.83 and Draisaitl at 1.80.

Aho, third in raw points, is at 1.57 per game because he has played two more games than McDavid. Pettersson, who has played the most games of the ten, sits last in the group on a per-game basis at 1.14.

For anyone reading a scoring list in October, that gap between totals and rates is the first thing to check.

Three connected blocks show POINTS divided by GAMES PLAYED equals POINTS PER GAME.
Concept diagram of the article's rate-versus-total explanation; it contains no live NHL player values or standings.

What the shooting numbers show

Two entries in the top ten stand out for how often their shots have gone in.

Across five games each, Bouchard has six goals on 17 shots (35.3%) and Kaprizov has six on 13 shots (46.2%).

Those rates are far above what either player has sustained over a full season. The NHL table lists games played alongside shooting percentages, showing the size of the early sample.

At the other end, Eichel has 12 points on 18 shots at 16.7%, and Matthews has ten points on 21 shots at 19.0%.

What the four Oilers numbers add up to

Edmonton occupies three of the top ten places, and the lines explain why the team's plus-minus numbers look the way they do.

McDavid is plus-12, Bouchard is plus-12 and Draisaitl is plus-9, all in five games. No other player in the top ten is better than plus-5.

That pattern is what a team scoring heavily with its top unit on the ice looks like in a small sample. It says nothing yet about whether it holds.

What the table does not tell you

The league's summary page reports totals, rates and shooting percentages. It does not explain deployment, quality of competition or how many of those points came in games that were already decided.

It also does not settle anything about the season. A handful of games is a small share of the schedule, and the group will be reshuffled many times.

One practical note for anyone checking these figures later: the totals move every night, and the games-played column is the fastest way to tell whether two players are being compared fairly.