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We were sitting here asking ourselves, who’s the next up in our point projection series? Nate Dogg…on the chorus of course. Nathan MacKinnon is undoubtedly one of the players on the planet right now. Therefore, what better player to follow up some of our previous point projection articles with than the Colorado Avalanche superstar Nathan MacKinnon. Be sure to check out some of our others such as Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, and Connor Bedard.
It is very difficult to quantify what makes MacKinnon one of the best players, at a time when you could argue the top-end talent in the hockey world is the highest its ever been. We are talking Cale Makar, Auston Matthews, Sidney Crosby, Nikita Kucherov, Leon Draisaitl, and Connor McDavid, you know a Goat-era.
On MacKinnon’s NHL career trajectory is the mediocre-at-best rate at which it took him to reach elite status. It is worth noting that in 2014-15, Mack’s sophomore season in the show, he managed but 38 points. On the other hand, the dude Jamie Benn won the Art Ross Trophy with 87 total points. That’s it. Okay, enough of that, what does that have to do with Nate in 2025-26?
The point we were actually getting it as Crosby‘s undeniable influence on MacKinnon’s journey. Yes, it was a while before MacKinnon became a regular top-point contributor. However, now that he has reached that level, there doesn’t appear to be any slowing down. Not unlike his fellow-hometown hero Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia product Sid Maybe-no-longer-a-Kid.
Year-over-year, from 2016-17 to 2017-18, MacKinnon’s points-per-games went from 0.646 to 1.311. Yeah. You heard it here first (well today), almost double. Since that time, he’s been unstoppable. A total 1.419 PPG in those eight campaigns.
One point on MacKinnon, is his shot is hard to describe. It is definitely different from all other elite players. Perhaps it is a mixture of the release like Sid and maybe, Matthews, like the sniper-ability anyway. You know? On his career average, he still only maintains a 10.5 shooting percentage. Furthermore, he’s still only hit 50 goals in a season once (51 in ’24). Well, we think it was 140 in ’24 for Mack, but we digress. The takeaway, when it comes to total points for MacKinnon, don’t count on too many goals. Not totally unlike McDavid actually from this year’s projection for him.
MacKinnon’s current three-year running average is 77 games, 42 goals, 81 assists, for over 122 points. The impressive part is the assists, coming off seasons of 89 and 84, respectively. Now, Mack will likely feel some drop without Mikko Rantanen on his flank. However, the Avs power play still maintains plenty of firepower to spare. Martin Necas and Makar know how to rip ’em bar down when the timing is right.
Okay, so what are we getting at? We seem to have narrowed in on his goals and assist totals, so why not put it all together? In terms of goals-per-60-minutes, MacKinnon has been 1.4 or better, six times. In contrast, he only had a 1.1 G/60 in 2024-25. He may have shifted to concentrating on padding the assist column somewhat. However, you would want to consider he could break out in the goal column at any time. After all, Rantanen isn’t there to steal some of those power play slam dunks net-front.
In any case, we like him to get back to that 1.3-1.4 G/60 level. That should allow him to approach the 40-mark, assuming everything else is normal, most notably games played, average ice time, and power play distribution. We don’t anticipate any sort of deviation from the normal towards lower-tail of our confidence interval. With MacKinnon it really is tough to know what to expect. We are just thinking that without Rantanen, it won’t necessarily slow him down, but might add to the goal column.
When it comes to assists, well consider this stat. From the start of the 2020-21 NHL campaign, MacKinnon has played 345 regular season games for the Avalanche. In that span, he has recorded an incredible 343 apples, or just a shade under one-per-contest. You know, OPC.
In any sense, we see no reason MacKinnon can’t post 40 goals and 75 assists. That put’s his over/under in our books at 115. And wouldn’t you have it, common sportsbooks have it at 113.5, go figure.
Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports
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Levi Pike is an editor and writer here at Last Word on Hockey. He has lived all over Canada but grew up in Nanaimo, BC. Currently, he lives with his loving wife, three kids, and dog in the capital of the Easterly most province of Canada, St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. He’s passionate about hockey, in particular, the Ottawa Senators and statistics. He received both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Statistics at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
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