The Avalanche won’t ever get out of this rut if the NHL’s most talented team can’t find somebody to kick Nathan MacKinnon’s butt.
Chris MacFarland, the ultimate hockey nerd, was never going to be the man to do that dirty work.
So it’s just as well that C-Mac has moved on to Nashville, where the Predators will undoubtedly benefit from one of the savviest front-office executives in the sport.
But the problem for the Avs isn’t the lack of smarts. We all know they’ve also got oodles of on-ice skill, a blessing this team has wasted by winning only a single championship in the past five seasons.
The big challenge is to find somebody with the gumption to harness the unsurpassed talent and juvenile attitude of MacKinnon, who runs hotter than any hockey superstar I’ve known since Hall of Fame goaltender Patrick Roy was stopping pucks and smashing video equipment for the Avs during the franchise’s glory days.
After Colorado got broomed out of the Western Conference finals by Vegas, nothing spoke louder about the team’s fatal flaw than the silence of MacKinnon.
While Avs captain Gabe Landeskog conducted an autopsy of a Stanley Cup run gone wrong, defenseman Cale Makar refused to make an excuse for an injury so bad he couldn’t take his sweater off without help and goaltender Mackenzie Blackwood wore an aching heart on his sleeve in the losing dressing room of T-Mobile Arena, MacKinnon was nowhere to be found.
While hiding out in the training room, the team’s leading scorer and MVP candidate took zero responsibility for the shocking sweep.
It was a clown move by MacKinnon.
Anyone who knows anything about sports understands the most troubling aspect of MacKinnon’s absence in the dark final hour of the Avalanche has absolutely nothing to do with owing a damn thing to anybody in the media.
In defeat, the team’s top-paid and most-talented player shouldn’t abandon his teammates to take the heat. Period.
It’s unfathomable to imagine either Broncos quarterback Bo Nix or Nuggets center Nikola Jokic so upset after a gut-wrenching defeat that they would take their ball and go home like a petulant child.
Nate is a Dogg. Nobody wants to win more than MacKinnon. His passion, however, is so intense it can be destructive when things begin to fall apart around him.
He’s a 30-year-old man who too often deals with adversity like a 10-year-old brat.
Anybody who saw MacKinnon give a death stare to a plush toy during the Olympic medal ceremony after Canada got beat by the USA in the championship game knows exactly what I’m talking about.
When the Golden Knights began poking soft spots in Colorado’s underbelly, the body language of MacKinnon made it obvious Vegas was getting under the Avalanche’s skin. Before the opening game in the best-of-seven series was over, he was slamming his stick on the team bench, and by the time MacKinnon got to the Strip, his downcast eyes were as pitiful as a kid who dropped an ice cream cone on the sidewalk in the Nevada desert heat.
I get being a sore loser. Ultracompetitive athletes often are. But when your best player spews tension when the going gets tough, it can be so contagious as to afflict the entire team.
Although MacKinnon has speed on skates that can kill, the Avs need to stop coddling him.
Rather than coaching MacK up, it seems to me that coach Jared Bednar babysits him.
With MacFarland taking a promotion Tuesday and running off to a Central Division rival, however, this is an inopportune time to move on from Bednar.
It is, however, a great opportunity for fresh eyes and fresh ideas to reshape how the Avalanche want to mount their next quest for the Cup.
While MacFarland made bold moves worthy of applause, he also left Colorado with the poison pill of a dangerously old roster and a paucity of draft capital.
This team had so many thirty-something contributors that it felt like MacFarland was putting together a burgundy-and-blue band for a last dance rather than building something truly sustainable.
At age 56, Joe Sakic has more institutional knowledge than anyone in the organization about Colorado’s grand hockey tradition. After serving as general manager from 2013-2022, when the team last hoisted the Cup, Sakic had the look of a man who no longer wanted the 24/7 grind of consuming video and working the phones to hunt for ways to win on the margins.
So when Avalanche governor Josh Kroenke announced Sakic will return to the role of general manager for the “foreseeable future,” I took it as code for saying the Avalanche would like the summer to figure out how the heck to get on with their future.
From Los Angeles Rams football coach Sean McVay to Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta, the Kroenke way is to recruit the best and brightest young minds in the sport. It’s not only cheaper than hiring a leader with a long resume, but also a strategy to constantly push the envelope with unconventional thinking.
In many hockey arenas, the suites that house front-office personnel sit directly above the row where media knuckleheads like me munch M&M’s with one hand while taking notes with the other during games.
While the Avs skated against Vegas, it was easy to spot MacFarland watching without a peep from his perch high above the ice.
Andrew Cogliano, the longtime NHL player and a veteran voice on Colorado’s last championship team before transitioning in 2024 to a front-office role, could be heard enthusiastically exhorting the Avs to take the battle to Vegas.
Avalanche ownership let MacFarland walk to Nashville, with the same heartfelt goodbyes and best wishes when Masai Ujiri and Tim Connelly departed the Nuggets.
The Kroenke family, however, would be ill advised to let MacFarland take Cogliano with him to Music City.
If Cogliano isn’t the coach or general manager of the Avs by Christmas, they’re doing it wrong.