Colorado Avalanche Forward Nathan MacKinnon Ready for Season

Colorado Avalanche forward Nathan MacKinnon is set to make his return to the Avalanche roster on Friday night against the L.A. Kings. However, he’s also ready to get the season underway.

The Colorado Avalanche have been playing without their core players so far this preseason. However, with Nathan MacKinnon, Erik Johnson, and Semyon Varlamov returning to the lineup against the Kings, the roster can begin to take form.

Carl Soderberg and Gabe Landeskog have started practicing as well. And, Matt Duchene’s Team Canada won the World Cup of Hockey on Thursday night, so he should be returning to the team soon as well.

In other words, the Colorado Avalanche will soon have all of their core players back with no injury. And, after watching their performances during the World Cup, there’s a lot to be hopeful for concerning the Avs.

That’s especially true for forward Nathan MacKinnon, who had a wonderful World Cup, and is now ready to bring those skills to Colorado.

Nathan MacKinnon Feels Like a Better Player Coming into this Season

After watching how MacK played at the World Cup, I didn’t need him to tell media that he was a better player this season. However, that’s exactly what he did in this video from the Colorado Avalanche website:

Quick hits from the video:

Well, once again I am wrong about MacKinnon and his role with the Colorado Avalanche:

In that post I posited that he might have put on even more weight. However, it seems he’s opted to lose weight instead in order to bring some speed back to his game.

He definitely looked faster at the World Cup than he did during the 2015-16 season, or even during the 2014-15 season.

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I guess I just thought that had to do with the speed on the ice from the entire North American team. However, it seems like MacKinnon focused on losing weight this offseason in order to bring speed back to his game.

That speed should translate well to the new systems the Avalanche want to implement this season.

Conclusion

I just want to bring attention to one more thing on MacK real quick. Was anyone else intrigued by his statement: “I’m not a big hitter or anything, so there’s no reason for me to be too heavy”?

I’ve always thought of MacK as a very tenacious player. I guess tenacity and big hitting are different things, but I’ve seen MacK lay some heavy hits:

And, he was brutal during the World Cup of Hockey. He was often the only player on the ice willing to get heavy with opponents.

Anyway, Nathan MacKinnon’s “new” speed should help him fit in nicely with Bednar’s systems.

He debuts on Friday night against the L.A. Kings. Unfortunately, none of the Avalanche games are accessible visually, so it looks like the game will be relegated to Altitude Radio again.

That’s all for today folks, thanks for stopping by!