Highest Scoring Games in NHL History
Photo: Bildbyrån
If you watched Buffalo Sabres beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 8-7 on March 9 and came looking for the record books, we hate to break it to you: 15 goals doesn't crack the list. Tage Thompson with four assists, Rasmus Dahlin with a goal and two helpers, Josh Doan with the winner at 15:43 of the third. A genuinely wild game between the top two teams in the league. And it wasn't even close to the all-time record.
The NHL is a different game than it was 40 years ago. Goaltending has evolved, systems have tightened, and the era of pure offensive chaos has long since passed. But the records from that wide-open 1980s period remain, and they aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
Here is every game in NHL history that reached 19 combined goals or more, ranked from bottom to top.
19 Goals: The Floor of the Record Books
Six games in NHL history have ended with a combined 19 goals. Five of them are from the early days of professional hockey, between 1918 and 1921, when rules and roster structures bore little resemblance to the modern game. The pair of games from March 1944 featuring the Detroit Red Wings and Boston Bruins tell you more about wartime roster depletion than they do about offensive talent.
The one that matters most from a contemporary standpoint took place on October 7, 1983, when the Vancouver Canucks opened their season with a 10-9 win over the Minnesota North Stars. It was just the second game of the year, and both teams combined for 19 goals in a chaotic, back-and-forth affair. Patrik Sundstrom was the key figure for Vancouver, scoring the winner while also contributing five assists. His right winger Tony Tanti added two goals and three helpers. It was a sign of things to come for that Canucks group, who leaned heavily on the Sundstrom-Tanti connection all season.
What makes that 1983 game distinct from the pre-war relics isn't just the era. The two 1944 results came on back-to-back nights between the same two teams, in a six-day span when both rosters were thin and irregular. The 1983 game was a legitimate season opener between two contending clubs. It's the only entry on this list that doesn't come with an asterisk.
20 Goals: The Oilers at Both Ends
Two games in NHL history have produced exactly 20 combined goals. The Edmonton Oilers were involved in both. Which tells you everything you need to know about that dynasty.
On January 4, 1984, Edmonton hosted the Minnesota North Stars at Northlands Coliseum and won 12-8 in what was, at the time, the highest-scoring game in 64 years. Wayne Gretzky was at the center of it, producing four goals and four assists for eight points, matching his NHL career high. Jari Kurri completed a hat trick and Mark Messier was heavily involved throughout. Two goaltenders were pulled on the Minnesota side. It was the kind of performance that redefined what an NHL offense was capable of.
The deeper context makes it even more remarkable. The 1983-84 Oilers were in the middle of a season in which they would finish with 446 team goals, win the Stanley Cup, and see Gretzky post 205 points. That night against Minnesota wasn't an aberration. It was Tuesday.
Then came January 8, 1986, and the Oilers found themselves on the wrong side of a similar result. Playing at Maple Leaf Gardens against the Toronto Maple Leafs, Edmonton fell 11-9 in a game that produced the highest-scoring night in the building's history. Miroslav Frycer scored four goals for Toronto, three of them in the third period, including the game-winner at 10:51. Gretzky answered with six points of his own, three goals and three assists, but it wasn't enough. Jari Kurri added a goal and five assists. Glenn Anderson tied the game at nine with minutes left before Frycer delivered the dagger. Rookie Dan Hodgson added an insurance marker at 18:42. A 5-1 Toronto first period had set the tone for the entire game, with Andy Moog pulled in favour of Grant Fuhr just five goals into the contest.
It remains one of the more stunning upsets in that era. The Oilers had won back-to-back Stanley Cups in 1984 and 1985. They were the most dominant team in hockey. The Leafs, who posted the third-worst record in the league that season, were better on that one night.
21 Goals: Most goals scored in an NHL game
The other is the most famous high-scoring game in NHL history, played on December 11, 1985.
The Chicago Blackhawks hosted the Oilers at Chicago Stadium, and what followed was, by any measure, the most extraordinary offensive performance in the modern history of the sport. Edmonton won 12-9. Kurri scored a hat trick. Anderson scored a hat trick. The two teams combined for 90 shots on goal across four goaltenders. Chicago pulled starter Murray Bannerman after allowing four goals on nine shots, turned to Bob Sauve, and got no relief. On the Edmonton side, Andy Moog started and gave way to Fuhr after the second period descended into chaos. The second period alone produced 12 combined goals, an NHL record that has never been touched.
The number that still stands out most: Gretzky had seven assists and zero goals. He became the engine for a 12-goal output without finding the net once, tying a single-game NHL record he himself had first set in February 1980 against the Washington Capitals. It was the second of three times in his career he would reach that mark. The performance is one of the defining individual displays of his career, precisely because it required none of the metrics most people use to define greatness.
After the game, Gretzky said: "There's never going to be another game like this."
He was right. It was the 1985-86 season, a year in which Gretzky scored 215 points and the Oilers produced 426 goals as a team. The numbers were so large they still feel fictional. That night in Chicago, 21 goals scored across 60 minutes, was the clearest possible expression of what that team, and that era, truly was. And the fact that the record was matched that same season, three weeks earlier on the losing end of an 11-9 result in Toronto, tells you just how absurd a period it was for the franchise.
No game since has come close.