Avalanche Game 48 Recap: The Natural

It's been 11 seasons, and I still can't believe we have such a superstar in Nathan MacKinnon. I remember the tail end of that shortened 2012-2013 season, and Avs fans were talking about the draft. Who would we get? Seth Jones was talked about a lot, but then this Nathan MacKinnon kid became the hot topic. So that was the name we decided to go with. We drafted MacKinnon, and he had quite the rookie year. Got his first taste of the playoffs, had 10 points. Eight of them were assists, three of them were in Game One. Back then, I thought, "We have ourselves a good one here."

10 seasons and a Stanley Cup later, it looks like we have a great one.

As for this point, the Avs were back in action for the first time in a minute, as Game 48 saw the Avs back at home against the Washington Capitals. The goalie matchup was Alexandar Georgiev vs Charlie Lindgren; Darcy Kuemper, our former goalie from the Cup year, was on the bench because this was the second of a back-to-back for the Caps, and Kuemper started for Washington the night before in Minnesota. It was slow for the Avs at first. Washington had the first power play, that got killed off, but at the halfway point of the period, the shots were 6-1 in the Caps' favor. The shots started building up for the Avs, but with 1:51 left, Washington gets another power play. However, Colorado gets an odd man rush, Andrew Cogliano passes it to Cale Makar, and he puts it in! A shortie for Makar makes it 1-0 for the Avs!

That was the score after 20, and the rest of the power play is killed off. The Avs get a power play very early in the 2nd, and it was Nicolas Aube-Kubel--the Cup denter himself--with the infraction. The PP is successful, and guess who? Nathan MacKinnon (from Rantanen and Makar), because of course it is! He wasn't even close to being done. Another Caps penalty leads to another Colorado PP chance, and take two: MacKinnon from Rantanen and Makar! Just as the Caps were about to get some control, MacKinnon and Rantanen break away. Rantanen passes it to MacKinnon, and boom! HAT TRICK! Not just any hat trick, mind you. A natural hat trick! What's the difference? A hat trick is three goals in a game. A natural hat trick is when the player scores three straight goals without a teammate's goal being scored in between. Even more amazing: this NHT was done in the span of six minutes and 37 seconds of game time. Wow!

The Avs led 4-0 after 40 minutes, and Nathan MacKinnon was skating around wearing his goal total for the season. He wouldn't be the only one. Georgiev's shutout bid ended at 7:26 in the third, when Dylan Strome scored his 17th (see?) of the season. Less than three minutes later, Mikko Rantanen made it 5-1, with the assists coming from MacKinnon and Jonathan Drouin, marking Point #81 for the former--giving him the lead over Nikita Kucherov. Avs received another power play that turned into a 5-on-3, but a high sticking infraction made it a 4-on-3 power play. The PP was killed off, but again, guess who? MacKinnon scores his fourth of the game to make it 6-1, and that was five points for not only him, but Rantanen as well, as he had the primary assist (the secondary one went to Ross Colton. Dylan Strome scored again, but all that did was help his stat sheet, as the Avs went on to win, 6-2.

You know, it's really amazing how good karma works in hockey. The Avs' last game before this saw MacKinnon gave up an easy opportunity at a hat trick to allow teammate Logan O'Connor to get his first career hattie. So how does MacKinnon get rewarded for such unselfishness? He scores four of his own and gets an assist to boot. Five points; a total of nine points in the last two games. This was MacKinnon's second four-goal game this season! Overall, MacKinnon has 82 points this season, which is the magic number to rack up if one wants to average a point per game. He now has the league lead in points by two over Nikita Kucherov, and the four-goal performance now gives him 30 this season, so he should definitely surpass his career high of 42 goals, which he set last year. We could see MacKinnon score 50 this season, and actually go on to win the Ross Trophy. There is even a small chance he could win the Rocket Richard Trophy! How is he not the frontrunner for the Hart?!

The Avs are now tied with the Winnipeg Jets in standings points, as the Jets lost 1-0, in overtime, to the Toronto Maple Leafs (courtesy of Auston Matthews' league-leading 39th goal of the season). However, Winnipeg's games in hand keep them ahead of the Avs, but there's still a lot of time left this season. Next up for the Avs is a home game against the Los Angeles Kings, and it will be Colorado's last game before the break, giving us quite the long layoff.

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