This is total points (goals plus assists). Ovie will break Gretzky’s goal record soon which is amazing. Incredible. But you may be wondering how safe Gretzky’s points record is? It is safe. He’ll probably be long dead if it’s ever broken.

It would take a number of things to even threaten the all-time points record. The first would be a change in overall scoring to even make it possible. In the 1980s (Gretzky debuted in 1980) NHL teams scored 3.83 goals per game on average. In the current season it’s 3.00 exactly. It would probably take significant rule changes at this point.

It would also take the perfect storm around an already-rare incredible player. They would need to stay healthy. They would need some help, and in a salary cap league that’s very difficult to maintain. I am not saying they carried him by any stretch of the imagination, but Gretzky was certainly helped by having Coffey, Messier, Kurri etc. for his entire prime. I don’t think you could keep that team together for that long in a hard salary cap world.

To summarize, Gretzky had all those things and he still lapped the field. He has 2857 career points. No one else has ever hit 2000. He would be the all-time points leader on assists alone, not even considering goals.

To put it in perspective: the standard for points scoring in the last decade has been Connor McDavid. He has led the league in points 5 times in his 10 seasons and has 1072 points in 708 games (1.5 pts/game). He is 71st in all-time scoring.

In his first 10 seasons, Gretzky had led the league in scoring 7 times and tied for the lead in another season. He had 1837 career points in 774 games (2.4 pts/game). Only 3 players other than himself have scored more in a career. His lowest scoring season in that time was 137 points in his rookie season. McDavid has more than 137 just once.

So yeah, that record is pretty safe for now.