{"id":541927,"date":"2026-03-17T08:15:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T08:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/541927\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T08:15:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T08:15:10","slug":"mackinnon-on-recent-avalanche-struggles-winning-can-mask-some-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/541927\/","title":{"rendered":"MacKinnon on recent Avalanche struggles: ‘Winning can mask some stuff’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Colorado Avalanche<\/a> have been leading the pack for the Presidents’ Trophy all season, but some recent struggles and a surge by the Dallas Stars have closed the gap.<\/p>\n

The Avalanche and Stars both lost on Monday, meaning Colorado will maintain its three-point lead over Dallas entering a pivotal showdown on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

But it’s how the Avalanche have been losing that’s most concerning to Nathan MacKinnon<\/a>. On Monday, it was a 7-2 loss at home to the Pittsburgh Penguins that exposed more flaws in the Avalanche lineup.<\/p>\n

“We’re too perimeter, we don’t shoot enough. We haven’t had 30 shots in four games now, which is very, very, very rare for us,” MacKinnon said post-game<\/a>. “Usually we work off that D1 shot, but obviously our forwards need to help our D more. Even the Seattle game wasn’t great either; sometimes winning can mask some stuff.”<\/p>\n

The Avalanche are 6-4-0 in their last 10 games with just a plus-one goal differential. In the Seattle game MacKinnon mentioned, the Avalanche won 5-1 last Thursday despite being outshot 29-26. They followed that up with a 3-1 loss to the Winnipeg Jets, in which they heavily tilted the ice in their favour but only scored once, and Monday’s loss to the Penguins, in which Pittsburgh led 4-2 after the first period and never let up from there.<\/p>\n

The Avalanche have been playing without three key forwards in Gabriel Langeskog, Artturi Lehkonen and Ross Colton. As a result, MacKinnon says, the lines have been shuffled around a lot, but he’s not using that as an excuse.<\/p>\n

“I think chemistry matters, you know, and if a guy’s used to playing centre, filling in, routes, it’s no one’s fault,” MacKinnon said. “A lot of different line combinations lately, for everybody, so it’s hard.<\/p>\n

“It sounds like an excuse, but tonight was just bad, too… It was one of those nights that just sucked.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Colorado Avalanche have been leading the pack for the Presidents’ Trophy all season, but some recent struggles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-541927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541927","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=541927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}