{"id":563050,"date":"2026-03-25T09:40:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T09:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/563050\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T09:40:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T09:40:14","slug":"oilers-connor-mcdavid-tops-400-career-goals-with-1200-points","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/563050\/","title":{"rendered":"Oilers’ Connor McDavid tops 400 career goals, with 1,200 points"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mar 25, 2026, 01:32 AM ET<\/p>\n

SALT LAKE CITY — Connor McDavid<\/a> kept a straight face while making a curious revelation to a group of reporters after surpassing 400 career goals.<\/p>\n

“Goal scoring is something that has not come easy to me,” the Edmonton Oilers<\/a> star said Tuesday night after scoring twice in a 5-2 win<\/a> over Utah<\/a>, giving him 401.<\/p>\n

“It’s something that I work at, something that I focus on,” McDavid added. “I set a goal at the beginning of the year: trying to shoot more pucks.”<\/p>\n

Jack Roslovic<\/a>, who also had two goals in the win, couldn’t believe McDavid’s claim that he’s not a natural at scoring. When asked if he agreed, Roslovic looked incredulous and scoffed: “No comment.”<\/p>\n

Roslovic says his team, which moved into second place in the Pacific Division, follows the longest tenured captain in Oilers history even if he doesn’t say a lot.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoal scoring is something that has not come easy to me,\u201d Connor McDavid said Tuesday after surpassing 400 career goals. “It\u2019s something that I work at, something that I focus on. I set a goal at the beginning of the year: trying to shoot more pucks.”\u00a0Aaron Baker\/Icon Sportswire<\/p>\n

“It’s just the hustle. Everyone watches him, knows what he’s doing, and it’s inspiring, humbling, motivating,” the center said.<\/p>\n

McDavid became the fifth player in Oilers history to reach 400 goals when he took a feed from Mattias Ekholm<\/a> and Evan Bouchard<\/a> and beat Karel Vejmelka<\/a> with 7:53 left in the second period.<\/p>\n

The go-ahead goal was his 39th of the season and put Edmonton in front 3-2. He scored his 401st goal and 40th of the season on an empty-netter with 7.5 seconds remaining.<\/p>\n

McDavid is a three-time winner of the Hart Memorial Trophy as the league’s MVP — one of only two unanimous winners, along with Wayne Gretzky — and is known for his extraordinary quickness, recently hitting a top on-ice speed of 24.61 mph in a game.<\/p>\n

“Of course, there’s his speed, but I don’t think he gets enough credit for his shot,” Oilers coach Kris Knobaluch said. “He is dangerous when he gets off the circles and he’s got a great release and is so difficult to check. He’s so determined to get to the net.”<\/p>\n

Editor’s Picks<\/a><\/p>\n

McDavid considers himself more of a playmaker. He now has 1,200 points in his career — the third-fastest player to reach the mark behind Gretzky and Mario Lemieux — and needs just one assist to reach 800.<\/p>\n

“It’s a big number, obviously, and I feel like I got a lot of great years ahead of me still, which is exciting,” said McDavid, the No. 1 draft pick in 2015. “These milestones are just a nice time to reflect and I’m just very grateful to have played with so many great players.”<\/p>\n

Some of them say it’s difficult at times to not sit back and watch the show McDavid puts on.<\/p>\n

“He’s amazing,” Roslovic said. “Just really cool for him, obviously, to do that, and then for us to be able to be a part of it and to be able to watch is special.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mar 25, 2026, 01:32 AM ET SALT LAKE CITY — Connor McDavid kept a straight face while making…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-563050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}