Nathan MacKinnon Going Full Beast Mode

He's the NHL first star of the week, and it seems he's only getting started

When I first met Nathan MacKinnon, in 2013, he was technically a boy. He was 17 years old. I’d had a couple of phone conversations with him prior to the NHL draft that summer in New Jersey, then got to meet him, his parents and sister during a draft function that included a boat ride to some little island on the waters of the Hudson River (I think).

MacKinnon was on my flight coming back to Denver from the draft. He was accompanied by an Avs PR person. I most definitely remember thinking, as MacKinnon ordered some fast food at the airport prior to the flight, “Man, he looks like a kid.” Because, he was almost!

You don’t make that kind of observation anymore. MacKinnon is 27 now, a 10-year veteran of the league. Yet, it still doesn’t feel like he’s hit his prime yet. Some statistical argument can be made for that by MacKinnon’s 2022-23 season in which he has surpassed 100 points for the first time in his career and was just name the NHL’s No. 1 star of the week.

MacKinnon has at least one point in 17 of his last 19 games. He’s got 107 points on the season, in 68 games.

His performance last night in Anaheim, I thought anyway, personally stole that game. It kept the Avs in first place in the Central Division. A loss would have been cause for all kinds of local concern. The Ducks are awful, and the Avs were down 4-2 pretty late in the game. But MacKinnon just willed his team to the win.

That’s why he’s worthy of the NHL’s highest-paid contract starting next season, at $12.6 million per (I wrote last off-season that MacKinnon wanted/would be the highest-paid player in the league, at least for a while, and everybody pooh-poohed it. Then, they belatedly had to admit I was right - again).