Colorado Avalanche center Nathan MacKinnon recently hit the 40 goal mark, becoming the first, and, so far, only 40 goal scorer on the season. With NHL action frozen for the Olympics, Nathan MacKinnon sits atop the NHL's leaderboard's, and many of the PHWA's preliminary voting sheets as he heads off to Milan.
With 40 goals and 53 assists for 93 points, MacKinnon sits only two points behind the NHL's league leader in soon to be Team Canada teammate Connor McDavid. However, MacKinnon has six more goals than McDavid does and has been leading the league and the NHL's best team in scoring as they look to win the Stanley Cup for the first time since 2022.
Next man up
On the first line, the only mainstay has been MacKinnon as Martin Necas, Arturi Lehkonnen, and Valeri Nichushkin all have been moved around the Avs' forward lines. MacKinnon has been dealing with a rotating cast on either side of him on the Avs' top line with Gabe Landeskog slow in his return to form as well. The Avs' captain worked his way up from the third line and averaging under 15 minutes a night back to the top line and averaging over 20 minutes a night, only to get injured in early January and have to exit the lineup once more.
MacKinnon, meanwhile has played in all 55 of the Avalanche's games and hasn't appeared to let any of the outside noise or the rotating cast on-ice effect him. He's on pace for one his best seasons in his career with a current 60 goal pace in the regular season and, according to Hockeystats.com, a league leading 5.99 WAR, which is a full point and a half above the next player on the leaderboard. MacKinnon has shown himself to be far and away the best player in the league on a night to night basis this season, even on a loaded roster. The next top Avs' goal scorer is Brock Nelson with 29, and Martin Necas in third with 22 on the season.
Landeskog isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but MacKinnon has shown himself to be a more than capable face of the franchise and leader while the veteran captain has missed time over the last few years with injury.
Trophy hunting
MacKinnon has the potential this year to win the Hart Memorial Trophy and the Art Ross Trophy, though at the moment the "more certain" of the two appears to be the Hart. ESPN's Greg Wyshyski's recently published his NHL Awards Watch and his polling has MacKinnon is leading in the anonymous vote for the third straight month. Though Nikita Kucherov has also been making it a closer race over the last month and a half, and Macklin Celebrini has even thrown his hat in the ring. Kucherov won the award in 2019, and Celebrini is leading a young Sharks team in a way not often seen with sophomore forwards. MacKinnon won the Hart in 2024 and has been a finalist
In the Art Rossrace, MacKinnon, as previously mentioned, currently sits two points behind McDavid, but as the Oilers have struggled, McDavid hasn't been completely immune to some of the effects. It'll be a race down to the wire between those two after the Olympics end, with just under thirty games left to be played in the season.
MacKinnon, in his age 29 season, may very well be showing that the best is yet to come for him and the Avalanche.