An ode to Nathan MacKinnon

I went to Avs-Wild last night. Sometimes it's important to marvel at what you saw and appreciate it.

I apologize, it’s been a bit of a slow start to the week here.

I flew out to Denver on Monday night for movie-related projects (you can rent/watch said movie here), and have been running around in that world helping things run smoothly for a watch party in Denver tonight.

I did take the time, however, to watch some hockey and do something in the NHL world for readers here. And yesterday Prashanth Iyer and I recorded an episode of Expected by Whom? with Michigan State coach Adam Nightingale, which I’ll have up later this week, with an accompanying story.

Yesterday at Colorado Avalanche morning skate I chatted with defenseman Sean Walker about a number of things, but also a topic near and dear to my heart — Bowling Green State University hockey — I’ll have something on that and college hockey in general tomorrow morning to help tee up the Frozen Four.

But I woke up this morning, and I’m still trying to wrap my mind around how Nathan MacKinnon makes me feel about hockey.

I watched MacKinnon’s demolition of the Minnesota Wild in person last night.

He scored thrice and had a pretty assist as he reached 137 points and crossed the 50-goal barrier for the first time in his career.

MacKinnon has always been one of may favorite players to watch, being in the Central Division for a long time in Dallas, I watched first hand as he would come to town each year with a generally terrible team and dragged them into relevancy.

Once he’s had quantifiable talent around him, and a running mate in Cale Makar, MacKinnon effectively turned the Avalanche into a one of the NHL’s modern-day powers and won a Stanley Cup in 2022.

We often look for comparisons to the past when we watch hockey, or sports in general. Since we don’t have perfect 20/20 hindsight on the presence, we go to the history books or our memory banks to try and ask, “have we seen this before?”

And for me, MacKinnon is my Mario Lemieux.

I grew up as a New Jersey Devils fan in the 1990s, grew up with efficiently boring hockey. The seasons were long, they had cup parades, but they were far from exciting and I became a goalie because of Martin Brodeur.

But living in the New York area, I was also able to watch more hockey than most kids in the pre-digital out-of-market package era. At that time it was good to be in a place where the television coverage included multiple NHL teams, it didn’t mean blackouts, it meant you could see a team or player on television from any team at least semi-frequently.

Most of the time I picked the Devils game, I was a die-hard fan, but occasionally I would pick an Islanders or Rangers game on TV if they were playing the Pittsburgh Penguins. Lemieux was special, even if an age of standard definition televisions, you could tell he was different. He did things with size and speed that didn’t make sense, he accelerated in ways that he should have and effectively pushed his body to limit that sports science would allow at that time.

I remember watching him on TV before he first retired in 1997, four years later I remember it being a national holiday for me when he returned on Dec. 27, 2000. We were at our neighbor’s house for a holiday party and I convinced them to let me put ESPN on the small TV in the kitchen so I could watch Penguins-Maple Leafs and Lemieux’s return.

I get similar feelings now watching MacKinnon. This isn’t to say he’s the best player in the world, but he’s the player that most often defies logic and human understanding for me. He’s not just fast, he somehow accelerates and hits afterburners that could only be explained a the human version of nitrous oxide in a Fast and Furious car somehow jumping the Atlantic Ocean (that’s what’s happening in those movies now, right?).

I frequently say, hockey is a game and games are supposed to be fun. What MacKinnon does, especially when you get a chance to watch in person and just focus on his shifts, is special.

Ok, I’ll have more from a less emotional, more analytical perspective of hockey later this week. But sometimes it’s important to stop and remember why we enjoy this game, how it entertains us and we want to see incredible athletes do incredible things.