The Colorado Avalanche have three games remaining in the 2024-25 regular season. They secured their spot in the postseason a couple of games ago and appear extremely likely to face the Dallas Stars in the first round of the 2024-25 Stanley Cup Final. Minus some potential personal goals, there probably isn’t much for some of the team’s star players to play in the final three games.
That appears to be the case with Nathan MacKinnon. He’s reportedly dealing with a minor injury and won’t play Thursday night, and why risk something worse happening to him in the last few games leading up to the playoffs? While a ton of fans go to the team’s games to watch superstars like MacKinnon, it won’t happen on Thursday night against the Vancouver Canucks at Ball Arena. As of right now, it’s unknown whether or not he plays in the last three games, but Thursday, he is out.
If MacKinnon does not play the rest of the regular season, he would be finishing the year with 32 goals and 84 assists (116 points) in 79 games.
MacKinnon is currently tied with Tampa Bay Lightning star Nikita Kucherov in points, and 10 points ahead of third place, Leon Draisaitl of the Edmonton Oilers. There’s a chance that MacKinnon finishes in second place barring a devastating injury to Kucherov.
MacKinnon also has .41 goals per game, tied with six other players in the league, including former Avalanche winger Mikko Rantanen, who ended up on the Dallas Stars after a failed short stint with the Carolina Hurricanes.
Of course, MacKinnon missing the last three games of this season won’t tarnish his reputation overall as one of the best players in the entire league (a lot of people view him as the greatest, but I would be willing to listen to debates on the topic. Connor McDavid would be a player whose name would come up often in that discussion, but that’s neither here nor there.
If two players tied in overall points, here’s how the tiebreakers work for earning the Art Ross trophy:
1. Player with the most goals
2. Player with fewer games played
3. Player scoring first goal of the season.
Going through those requirements, it appears that Kucherov would be the winner of the Art Ross trophy. Either way, this season has been yet another awesome one for MacKinnon, who, at his pace, is going to be known as one of the greatest Colorado Avalanche players of all-time.