3 potential Colorado Avalanche MVPs for the 2024-25 season
- Nathan MacKinnon will stay top form for the foreseeable future
- Mikko Rantanen improves on an impressive 2023-24 season
- Colorado Avalanche have the best defenseman in the entire league
The Colorado Avalanche are looking to make it back to the Stanley Cup Final in 2024-25. They would not be as successful as they have been, without some key contributors on both offense and defense. How many of them could potentially be the team’s most valuable player? Perhaps four or five different guys.
The Avalanche haven’t been as successful since their most recent Stanley Cup-winning season, but by no means have they been a terrible team, making the postseason every year since, still. They just have to find their way over the hump and back to the Stanley Cup Playoffs. It’s possible with so many great players. You cannot ever rule them out, unless they literally are eliminated.
I’ve narrowed it down to three players who I think have the best chance at becoming the team’s best player.
3. Cale Makar, defenseman
For new fans of the Colorado Avalanche, or NHL fans in general, you would find out who Cale Makar is pretty darn quick. Simply put, he is “arguably” the best defenseman in all of the NHL. Some will argue that Quinn Hughes would be ranked above him, but that won’t be me. As an Avalanche fan, it is a treat to get to watch him night in and night out.
Last season, Makar played in 77 of 82 games, recording 21 goals and 69 assists for a total of 90 points. Despite that awesome stat sheet, he actually had seven more goals during the team’s Stanley Cup season in 2021-22. He is always a game-changer.
Makar was also plus-15 last season, meaning that he was on the ice for 15 more goals than he was on the ice for goals against.
One of the greatest things about Makar is that, while he is technically a defenseman, his offensive skillset is evident all of the time, pretty much. That’s exactly what the ideal defenseman is. Anybody can shoot the puck in hockey, but it takes extreme talent to be able to place the puck exactly where the player is aiming.
He is also very fast. According to NHL Edge, Makar reached a top speed of 23.24 miles per hour. That came in at the 97 percentile.
So yeah, being a top player in the league doesn’t always have to include top 3 scoring. There’s more to a lot of players’ game, but none more than Makar.
2. Mikko Rantanen, F
Despite being in the news regarding an upcoming contract extension with the Colorado Avalanche, I don’t know if Mikko Rantanen is getting the attention and credit that he deserves. He’s a monster on the ice,
He is on the top line with Nathan MacKinnon and Jonathan Drouin, and is very fortunate to be on that line with the former, who is the best player in the world (again, I suppose that will be up for debate with Edmonton Oiler fans). Head coach Jared Bednar did the right thing in having Rantanen play on that line, despite the early-season shuffling of the lines. He found what worked and it has done wonders for this team.
Rantanen played in 80 of 82 games last season, recording 42 goals—the second-most amount of goals for his career—and 62 assists, the most amount of assists in his career. Needless to say, it was an absolute beast of a year for Rantanen and there should be nobody in the universe that would say he does not deserve a massive contract extension.
Sometimes in sports, you will have players who regress after getting paid. I highly doubt that will happen to Rantanen, given how much of a team sport hockey is. What the Avalanche have going on the top line is pretty close to as perfect as you can get.
1. Nathan MacKinnon, C
You knew it was coming.
Nathan MacKinnon is named the best player in the world by pretty much everybody. What truly blows me away with him is his speed when he is in control of the puck. I always catch myself referring to him as a shark in the ocean that is trying to catch up to its prey. Just like a shark, MacKinnon is always on a mission when he is in control of the puck.
The league knows, too. Despite coming in at fourth place in terms of goals for the 2023-24 season (51), and third in assists (89 — Nikita Kucherov and Connor McDavid come in first place with 100 each), MacKinnon still won the Hart Trophy, the trophy that goes to the MVP of the league, voted on by the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association (PHWA).
It’s incredible, because there’s no sign of MacKinnon slowing down anytime soon. He will end up being a Hart Trophy finalist for years to come, as well as possibly some other awards.
If you happen to be a new fan of the Colorado Avalanche (and yes, there are new fans coming in every year), I want to say welcome, you get to witness one of the greatest players of all-time.
MacKinnon is definitely the favourite to be the Colorado Avalanche’s MVP, and based off of this Twitter/X poll, Avalanche nation agrees.
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