Mark Madden: Connor McDavid's scoring is impressive, but Mario Lemieux defined his era

Edmonton’s Connor McDavid reached 70 points in 43 games. That’s fast but unsurprising in the limp competition of the North division, the NHL’s worst. It’s so weak that McDavid’s Oilers and the Toronto Maple Leafs will be hard-pressed to both underachieve in the playoffs.

It’s not likely, but hardly impossible.

In the last 25 years, only six times did players reach 70 points faster than McDavid. All of them are Penguins. Three of them are Mario Lemieux.

In 1995-96, Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr and Ron Francis all got to 70 points quicker than McDavid. Lemieux moved from center to left wing to accommodate all three skating on the same line, which had a horrible nickname: “The Score Lords.” Rotten moniker, great trio.

Jagr took 34 games to hit 70 points, Francis 40.

But Lemieux truly ran amok, reaching 70 points in just 25 games, the fastest posted over that quarter-decade.

I’ve witnessed Lemieux’s entire career, and I didn’t remember that nugget. That’s testimony to how often Lemieux posted numbers that defied logic. His statistical feats ran together in a mathematical whirlwind, the next blending into the last.

Lemieux finished ’95-96 with 161 points in 70 games, tops in the NHL. He got “only” 91 points in his last 45 games. Only for Lemieux would that pace equate to slowing down.

That season marks the last time an NHL player eclipsed 160 points. Or 150. Or 140. Or 130. No NHL player ever again will register freakish numbers like Lemieux did.

Back then, Lemieux’s feats almost got taken for granted. He once tallied five points and got named the game’s No. 2 star.

That’s not as bad as posting 199 points and finishing second in MVP voting. Lemieux did that in 1988-89. He had 31 more points than “most valuable” Wayne Gretzky. They were all goals. The entire concept of MVP awards died at that moment.

Lemieux also reached 70 points quicker than McDavid in 1996-97, the last season before his first retirement. It took 40 games.

Then Lemieux did it again coming out of retirement, in 2000-01. It took 41 games, one more. Lemieux scored at almost exactly the same pace after a three-and-a-half-year hiatus. That seems impossible.

McDavid’s current statistics are impressive, not least because they go against the grain of the era. NHL teams are averaging just 2.92 goals. That number was 3.14 in ’95-96.

But Lemieux defined his era. McDavid does not.

Subtract the goals Lemieux produced in ’95-96, and the NHL average drops to 2.98. Lemieux was responsible for 5% of the NHL’s goals that year. That’s in a 26-team league.

Lemieux is about even more than stats. Artistry counts, too. His is splashed all over YouTube.

But numbers mattered a lot to No. 66. As he once famously said on my radio show, “I judge myself by Stanley Cups and scoring titles. Nobody votes on those.”

It’s amazing Lemieux never got the NHL record for goals in a game or points in a game. The former is six, the latter 10. He had five goals in a game four times, eight points in a game three times. He always wanted more. He didn’t miss those records for lack of trying.

I covered the Penguins on a road trip out west early in that 1995-96 season. The San Jose Sharks were one of the opponents, and not very good. Nobody was better at exploiting bad foes than Lemieux. He’d gut them like a fish.

The Penguins beat the Sharks, 9-1, on Nov. 10, 1995. Lemieux had a goal and four assists. Not a bad evening.

But when I spoke to Lemieux after, he seemed a bit frustrated. He talked about chances gone begging, not those converted. He said something like, “You only get so many shots at it.”

It occurred to me: He’s referring to the record. Ten points in a game. Mere mortals don’t think about that. Lemieux did.

That’s how you get 70 points in 25 games.