{"id":579889,"date":"2026-04-02T03:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T03:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/579889\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T03:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T03:21:08","slug":"colorado-avalanches-nathan-mackinnon-becomes-first-player-this-season-to-reach-50-goals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/579889\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado Avalanche&#8217;s Nathan MacKinnon becomes first player this season to reach 50 goals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/team-page\/colorado-avalanche\/21\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/team-page\/colorado-avalanche\/21\" target=\"_blank\">Colorado Avalanche<\/a> star <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/player\/nathan-mackinnon\/8477492\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/player\/nathan-mackinnon\/8477492\" target=\"_blank\">Nathan MacKinnon<\/a> became the first player this season to hit the 50-goal mark after finding the back of the net in the opening period against the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/team-page\/vancouver-canucks\/23\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/team-page\/vancouver-canucks\/23\" target=\"_blank\">Vancouver Canucks<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">With Vancouver out to an early 1-0 lead, MacKinnon found space in the slot and fired a wrist shot past Canucks\u2019 netminder <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/player\/kevin-lankinen\/8480947\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/player\/kevin-lankinen\/8480947\" target=\"_blank\">Kevin Lankinen<\/a>. It\u2019s the second time in his career he\u2019s reached the milestone after scoring 51 goals during the 2023-24 campaign. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The marker was MacKinnon\u2019s 121st point of the season, putting him in a tie for second with Tampa Bay\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/player\/nikita-kucherov\/8476453\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/player\/nikita-kucherov\/8476453\" target=\"_blank\">Nikita Kucherov<\/a> for second most in the league. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/player\/connor-mcdavid\/8478402\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/player\/connor-mcdavid\/8478402\" target=\"_blank\">Connor McDavid<\/a> has a four-point lead on both Kucherov and MacKinnon at 125 for the league-high.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">MacKinnon is now three goals ahead of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/team-page\/montreal-canadiens\/8\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/team-page\/montreal-canadiens\/8\" target=\"_blank\">Montreal Canadiens<\/a> winger <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/player\/cole-caufield-390746\/8481540\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhl\/player\/cole-caufield-390746\/8481540\" target=\"_blank\">Cole Caufield<\/a>, who is second in the NHL.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The 30-year-old MacKinnon has helped the Avs build the best record in the league this season at 49-14-10 for 108 points in 73 games.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">However, the Avalanche fell 8-6 Wednesday night for just their second loss in seven games. MacKinnon finished with seven shots on goal but only the one point.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Brock Boeser had three goals and an assist for the Canucks in the win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colorado Avalanche star Nathan MacKinnon became the first player this season to hit the 50-goal mark after finding&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[16159,64,63,138889,244529,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-579889","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-colorado-avalanche-sports-hockey-team-team-nhl-api-21","12":"tag-nathan-mackinnon-sports-hockey-player-player-nhl-api-8477492","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}