Gabriel Landeskog<\/a> returned from a knee injury, appearing for the first time since he hoisted the Stanley Cup in 2022.<\/p>\nBut they blew a 2-0 lead in the third period of Game 7 and lost 4-2 to the Dallas Stars after Rantanen, whom the Stars acquired from the Hurricanes on March 7, exploded for three goals and an assist.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all thought we played really well, and Dallas is a great team,\u201d Sakic said. \u201c[The Stars] capitalized when they needed to capitalize, and we didn\u2019t, and that was the difference in the series. But you could tell there was a little extra coming into training camp, that these guys felt that there\u2019s a lot to prove.\u201d<\/p>\n
MacKinnon and Makar could reach new heights this season, and so could Colorado.<\/p>\n
MacKinnon is on pace for 68 goals, which would be an NHL career high, and 138 points, which would be two short of the high of 140 he had in 2023-24, when he won the Hart Trophy as the League\u2019s most valuable player. The center has never won the Rocket Richard Trophy as the NHL goals leader or the Art Ross Trophy as the League\u2019s scoring champion.<\/p>\n
Makar is on pace for 73 assists and 99 points, which would be NHL career highs for a player who has won the Norris Trophy as the League\u2019s best defenseman twice.<\/p>\n
The Avalanche are on pace for 136 points, which would break the NHL record of 135 the Boston Bruins set in 2022-23. Only the 1929-30 Bruins (.875) and the 1943-44 Montreal Canadiens (.830) have had a higher points percentage in a season than the Avalanche do so far this season.<\/p>\n
MacKinnon sets the tone.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no \u2018relax\u2019 in him,\u201d Sakic said. \u201cIt\u2019s just, he wants to get better every single day. Still. Even though in my mind he\u2019s the best there is right now, he\u2019s not satisfied.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not even about points for him. I think at the end of the day, when his career is over, he\u2019ll appreciate what he accomplished. But in the meantime, he doesn\u2019t care about that. It\u2019s about getting ready for the next game, being the best he can be for that game, and that\u2019s what drives him. He\u2019s a driven, driven player.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colorado president of hockey operations Joe Sakic said it goes back to last season. \u201cThe way we lost…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-333731","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}