That’s the case for the single-game postseason records, anyway. There has been a plethora of exceptional performances by the usual suspects — Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Maurice Richard and others.
But you’ll find some names in the record book that you might never have heard of, or that you would never guess had such dominant playoff performances.
The Sporting News looks at the NHL records for points, goals, and assists in a playoff game.
MORE: Explaining hockey’s postseason format
Who has scored the most points in a single NHL playoff game?
Twice in NHL history, a player has notched eight points in a playoff game.
Mario Lemieux and Patrik Sundstrom are tied for the record. Lemieux put up five goals and three assists for the Penguins in 1989 while Sundstrom had three goals and five assists in a 1988 contest for the Devils.
While it doesn’t come as a huge shock that Lemieux is up there, Sundstrom may take some people by surprise, and rightfully so. In fact, the Swedish forward’s eight points make up nearly a third of his career postseason point total (26).
Who has scored the most goals in a single NHL playoff game?
Five players have recorded five goals in a postseason game.
The last player to accomplish the feat was Lemieux in 1989. It was the same game he collected a record-tying eight points.
After those five players, there have been 33 incidences where a player has scored four goals in a game. Wayne Gretzky, Jari Kurri and Maurice Richard all did it twice.
The most recent four-goal performance in the playoffs was by Denis Gurianov in 2020, when he scored four times in a 7-3 win for the Stars.
MORE: Which team has won the most Stanley Cups?
Who has compiled the most assists in a single NHL playoff game?
Very similar to the points record, the assist record is shared by two players, one of whom is an NHL legend while the other would be an extremely difficult answer to a trivia question.
Wayne Gretzky and Mikko Leinonen are the only players in NHL history to notch six assists in an NHL postseason game. Gretzky is also one of just 12 players to record five assists in a game.
Like Sundstrom, Leinonen’s playoff performance was an extreme outlier in his career. Not only were the six assists he recorded in one game his only helpers of the entire 1982 postseason, but they also made up more than half his 11 career playoff assists.
