The Colorado Avalanche drafted Nathan MacKinnon first overall in the 2013 NHL Entry Draft and never looked back. While there were some players in the first round, especially in the top-10, that turned out to be very good players, MacKinnon was the right choice. Other options that followed first-overall were Aleksander Barkov, Jonathan Drouin, Seth Jones, Elias Lindholm, and Sean Monahan.
In the wake of the Toronto Maple Leafs receiving the number one overall pick in the 2026 NHL Entry Draft via the lottery, Friedman and his co-host Kyle Bukauskas talked about a couple of past draft scenarios revolving the first overall pick, and the 2013 Draft came up.
At least one team saw the potential in MacKinnon, however. The Calgary Flames reportedly sent a trade proposal to the Avalanche for MacKinnon, according to inside Elliotte Friedman on his podcast, 32 Thoughts.
"The famous one that I already remember is, when Nathan MacKinnon was up, Calgary had three picks in the first round: 6, 22, and 28. And they offered all three of them to Colorado for the number one pick."Elliotte Friedman on 32 Thoughts
Needless to say, though Friedman said it anyway, the Avalanche said no, and that’s all she wrote.
That year, the Avalanche had Hall of Fame center Joe Sakic as their executive vice president of hockey operations, while Greg Sherman had the title of general manager. At the time of MacKinnon’s drafting, Patrick Roy was the team’s head coach.
The players who the Flames took with their first-round picks in 2013 were Monahan, Emile Poirier, and Morgan Klimchuk. Poirer played six games for Calgary, while Klimchuk played one. That’s absolutely brutal.
Given Roy’s departure from the Avalanche before the 2016 season, I’m shocked that Roy didn’t find a way to screw up that selection of MacKinnon in 2013. Then again, he probably would have found himself out of a job, and not on his own terms.
Coincidentally, the Avalanche also have another top-10 pick from that draft in Valeri Nichushkin, who the Dallas Stars drafted 10th overall, and also signed Jonathan Drouin, who was third overall, and had him for two seasons.
The Avalanche ties to that first round didn’t stop there, though, as the Avs also had Nikita Zadorov and Andre Burakovsky on their roster at one point. Completely unrelated to the Nathan MacKinnon story, but I still found it interesting.
In the end, the Avalanche obviously won that decision of not passing on the first overall pick and got the best overall player out of it. MacKinnon is on his way to being a top-3 Avalanche player of all-time, and we have Patrick Roy to partially thank for that choice.
Add us as a preferred source on Google