{"id":70955,"date":"2020-03-11T14:03:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-11T18:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonhockey.com\/?p=70955"},"modified":"2020-03-11T14:03:00","modified_gmt":"2020-03-11T18:03:00","slug":"colorado-avalanche-nathan-mackinnon-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2020\/03\/11\/colorado-avalanche-nathan-mackinnon-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado Avalanche Nathan MacKinnon Out"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonhockey.com\/nhl-teams\/avalanche\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Colorado Avalanche<\/a> will be without <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/m\/mackina01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Nathan MacKinnon<\/strong><\/a> for a brief period. The team&#8217;s best player left early in a loss to the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonhockey.com\/nhl-teams\/kings\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Los Angeles Kings<\/a> Monday night. He suffered a lower-body injury and did not return.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Nathan MacKinnon will be out 1-2 weeks with a lower body injury. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/ewVWqps4rk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/ewVWqps4rk<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Colorado Avalanche (@Avalanche) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Avalanche\/status\/1237793618254913541?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 11, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Nathan MacKinnon Out<\/h2>\n<p>MacKinnon is having one of the best seasons of any player this year. The 24-year-old has 35 goals and 93 points in 69 games this season. He has been an outstanding scoring threat at both even-strength and on the power-play. There is very little MacKinnon hasn&#8217;t been able to do this year in what could be a Hart Trophy-winning campaign.<\/p>\n<p>MacKinnon may only continue to get better for the next several years. His scoring pace has increased beyond last year&#8217;s 41 goals, 99 point season. Players seemingly reach their peak around age-26 or 27 but MacKinnon has a few seasons to go before he hits that ceiling. His production coupled with his cap hit of just $6.3 million makes him one of the league&#8217;s best and most valuable players. The challenge for Colorado is acquiring a supporting cast capable of helping MacKinnon when he draws defensive attention.<\/p>\n<h3>What This Means for the Future<\/h3>\n<p>The team could struggle to find a consistent replacement for MacKinnon. Nobody on the team is a proven combination of speed and scoring ability. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/j\/jostty01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Tyson Jost<\/strong><\/a> has the potential to be a top centre but hasn&#8217;t put all of his skills together for a full season. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/c\/comphj.01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>J.T. Compher<\/strong><\/a> is one other option but has not demonstrated great chemistry with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/l\/landega01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Gabriel Landeskog<\/strong><\/a>. The team might ultimately turn to <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonhockey.com\/2020\/02\/24\/colorado-avalanche-acquire-vladislav-namestnikov\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">deadline acquisition<\/a> <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/n\/namesvl01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Vladislav Namestnikov<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>who is good on the power-play but has issues with the puck at even-strength.<\/p>\n<p>This injury could be huge for Colorado. They have suffered multiple injuries this year but none have been to a player of MacKinnon&#8217;s calibre. Watch the team&#8217;s approach in the season&#8217;s final weeks closely; they are a solid playoff team right now but will need to manage health carefully before the playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:<br \/>\n<a id=\"MSrbOM_TRY1Er8GNfNJpiA\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1206339279\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'MSrbOM_TRY1Er8GNfNJpiA',sig:'1wJ50k-uUjz8Bv07XWrEGU7RoyTOFuULQULJETM6UuM=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1206339279',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Colorado Avalanche will be without Nathan MacKinnon for a brief period. The team&#8217;s best player left early in a loss to the Los Angeles Kings Monday night. He suffered a lower-body injury and did not return. Nathan MacKinnon will be out 1-2 weeks with a lower body injury. pic.twitter.com\/ewVWqps4rk \u2014 Colorado Avalanche (@Avalanche) March [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3127,"featured_media":71024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28,34],"tags":[36,77],"class_list":["post-70955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-avalanche","category-news","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-nathan-mackinnon"],"modified_by":"Josh Erickson","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}