{"id":576771,"date":"2026-04-02T05:44:03","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T05:44:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/576771\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T05:44:03","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T05:44:03","slug":"avalanche-star-nathan-mackinnon-becomes-first-to-50-goals-this-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/576771\/","title":{"rendered":"Avalanche star Nathan MacKinnon becomes first to 50 goals this season"},"content":{"rendered":"

DENVER \u2014 Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon<\/a> became the first\u00a0NHL player this season\u00a0to reach 50 goals when his liner from up top beat Vancouver goaltender Kevin Lankinen<\/a> early in the first period on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

He celebrated the goal with a little extra flair, too, sliding on his right knee while pumping his right glove. That was pretty much the highlight for the Avalanche, whose rally from a four-goal deficit fell short in an\u00a08-6 loss\u00a0to the Canucks.<\/p>\n

It’s the second 50-goal campaign of MacKinnon’s career. He became the third player in Colorado\/Quebec history to notch multiple 50-goal seasons, joining Hall of Famers Joe Sakic (twice) and Michel Goulet (four).<\/p>\n

MacKinnon also joins Milan Hejduk (2002-03) as the only skaters in franchise history to hit the 50-goal mark first during an NHL season.<\/p>\n

MacKinnon tied Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov for second with 121 points. They are four behind league leader Connor McDavid of Edmonton.<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old MacKinnon turned in his fourth straight season of 110 or more points.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s where he’s gotten his production to over the last handful of seasons \u2014 high expectations,\u201d Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said before the game.<\/p>\n

After the game, Bednar was less than thrilled with his team’s play even if they had a late surge that saw them tie it up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to hand out badges for good effort and stuff like that \u2014 I think we\u2019re beyond that at this time of year,\u201d Bednar said. \u201cIf we’re making excuses for that performance, it’s going to be a short run.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked what went wrong in the opening two periods \u2014 falling behind 6-2 at one point and pulling goaltender Mackenzie Blackwood \u2014 Bednar simply said: \u201cIt’s too long of list.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DENVER \u2014 Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon became the first\u00a0NHL player this season\u00a0to reach 50 goals when his liner from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-576771","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\/576771","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=576771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}