Avalanche star Nathan MacKinnon might be NHL's scariest player entering playoffs

Let’s get an obvious truth out of the way: Connor McDavid is the best player in the NHL.

If you buy the idea that players have been getting better and better over time, there is a strong subjective argument to be made that he's the best player ever to set foot on the ice.

We have to get that disclaimer out of the way in order to make the following claim: entering the playoffs there might be no scarier player Nathan MacKinnon.

It’s easy for MacKinnon to get lost in the shuffle considering his 107 points rank sixth in the NHL in a year when offensive numbers are surging, and he’s missed 11 games due to injury.

Looking at his totals misses the forest for the trees, especially when considering how good he’s been since returning from an upper-body injury on New Year's Eve.

From Jan. 1 on, his 73 points are second in the NHL behind McDavid (79), and 53 of those points have come at even strength. That’s seven more than any other player as the Colorado Avalanche star is averaging 1.20 even-strength points per game, while only one other player – David Pastrnak – is above one (1.05).

While McDavid has gotten 40.5 percent of his point production with the man advantage, that number is just 27.4 percent for MacKinnon. This distinction is crucial in the postseason as the game gets officiated differently. While power-play opportunities don’t fall off a cliff, their distribution is altered.

Cam Charron at The Athletic recently found that while penalties can be plentiful early in series, it’s clear that referees swallow their whistles later on. Charron calculated that teams can lose as many as one whole power-play opportunity per game compared to their regular-season averages at the end of a series.

Put another way, when everything is on the line it’s difficult to rely on power-play production. A player’s skill with the man advantage during the season still counts towards their projected output in the playoffs, but it’s harder to count on.

That suits MacKinnon just fine.

Since the beginning of 2023 he leads all NHL forwards in even-strength ice time (816:36), and along with that workload has come impressive production. In that time, MacKinnon ranks first in on-ice goals and high-danger goals for, second in shots and scoring chances, and third in expected goals.

The Avalanche have outscored their opponents by 25 in MacKinnon’s even-strength minutes despite an on-ice save percentage of .895. Some of that is coming from a high on-ice shooting percentage (12.8 percent), but that’s not as flukey as it sounds. Thanks to MacKinnon’s elite skill level and top-notch linemates, he’s run a on-ice shooting percentage of 11.5 percent or better in each of the last four seasons, cracking 12 percent twice.

Many of the numbers above draw on a relatively small sample, but MacKinnon has never relied on the man advantage to produce. It may not be a coincidence that he’s thrived in the postseason in his career.

The center has produced 1.33 points per game in the playoffs in his career compared to 1.06 in the regular season. He also provided proof of concept that he could be the top center on a Stanley Cup-winning team last year — not that there were many doubters at that point.

While there is no shortage of stars to keep coaches up at night as the postseason approaches, there’s something to be said for a player with plenty of playoff pedigree who doesn’t need the ice tilted in his favor – especially when he logs more ice time than any of his peers without getting run down.

As single contributors go, McDavid is always going to suck up most of the oxygen in the room, and it’s hard to argue with that. His name has unavoidably been mentioned four times in what is an ode to MacKinnon’s recent greatness.

For all the plaudits McDavid deserves — make that five mentions — the gap between the Edmonton Oilers superstar and the rest of the league can be overstated at times. When the playoffs begin on Monday, MacKinnon is likely to remind the NHL that he’s built for crunch time.