MacKinnon seems to treat 3v3 OT like an all-star game skills competition. You said it correctly, that “MacKinnon isn’t paying attention at all.” Right?

I still come back to the fact that he is just drifting a bit through the season, awaiting games that matter. It felt like last year he was much more driven, consistently, and you have to wonder how much of that was chasing the Hart / Art Ross. Now the Hart is in the bag, it seems like he just doesn’t care often enough. I see this with the Oilers game, where he was seen spending time on his own at practice, came in laser focused, and was all over the ice dominating in that game, on National TV against his main rival for best player in the league. But against a random Wild team that’s banged up, doesn’t bring the same energy.

When he’s the tone setter for the whole team, that creates issues. It’s times like this where we’re clearly missing our Captain. As stated, I don’t think Nate is right for that role but I’m also not convinced it’s Cale either, he seems a bit to passive. He leads by example, which is great, but sometimes you have to light a fire and I haven’t yet seen him quite do that, but he’s still growing. Honestly Toews seems like the most natural leader to me. Was calling out passengers last year, shows up every night, and plays with a bit of a chip sometimes.