Nathan MacKinnon's new contract positions him to be an all-time great in Colorado

Nathan MacKinnon agreed to a new contract with the Colorado Avalanche this morning that should keep him with the organization until the twilight of his career, if not all of it. The eight-year pact worth $100.8 million makes MacKinnon the highest-paid player in the NHL with an annual average value of $12.6M, beating the deal for Edmonton Oilers superstar Connor McDavid which is $12.5M.

The deal corrects one of the great salary injustices in the NHL and literally doubles MacKinnon’s previous AAV of $6.3M.

That this deal is the new standard for elite forwards in the NHL says everything you need to know about how his last contract, which will expire at the end of the upcoming season, went for him and the Avalanche.

When that seven-year deal was signed, MacKinnon’s career-high in points was 63 in his rookie year. The first year of the deal, MacKinnon led the woefully bad Avalanche with a 53-point season on just 16 goals as the team fell to the bottom of the NHL with 48 points.

Since the start of the 2017-18 season, however, MacKinnon has been among the league’s elite players and helped the Avalanche ascend from the bottom of the league to the top, culminating in the Stanley Cup they won last year.

In that timeframe, MacKinnon is third in the NHL in points with 442 in 338 games played. He’s seventh in goals (167), seventh in assists (275), and second in shots on goal (1,472). He has finished second (twice), third, and sixth in Hart Trophy voting for the MVP of the league.

His postseason production has been elite, too, as he is second in postseason scoring behind only Nikita Kucherov with 83 points in 63 postseason games in the last five years. Even if you opened it up to his entire career going back to the 2013-14 season when MacKinnon won the Calder Trophy as the league’s best rookie, he is still fifth in playoff scoring with 93 points in 70 games.

In fact, it’s the postseason where MacKinnon has shined the brightest. His 1.33 points per game is the sixth-best pace in NHL history. He had 24 points in 20 games in the team’s Cup run last season and tied for the NHL postseason goal lead with 13.

All of this is to say what you already know: Nathan MacKinnon is elite. The elite of the elite. While arguments can be made that McDavid, Auston Matthews, maybe even Leon Draisaitl are slightly better offensive players, they have nowhere near MacKinnon’s track record of dominance in the postseason (both McDavid and Draisaitl have higher PPG but half the games played) and he’s the only member of that group to lift the Stanley Cup.

While Cale Makar helped elevate the Avalanche to a different place and was rightfully the Conn Smythe winner, MacKinnon finished second in that balloting behind a player whose early-career accomplishments have set him up to be one of the NHL’s best defensemen ever. I’m just saying it’s no shame to finish behind that guy for playoff MVP.

The truth here is that the Avs obviously never would have had the postseason experience they did before Makar even showed up without MacKinnon’s brilliance. His breakout from decent top-six forward to elite, play-driving engine of an elite offense is one of the primary reasons the Avs have been viewed among the league’s best for a number of years now and will continue to be favorites moving forward.

It’s gotten to the point where MacKinnon’s brilliance is almost taken for granted simply because he has a teammate who plays the game in a way that is breathtaking and rarely ever seen. It’s not that dissimilar from Joe Sakic’s steady excellence being overlooked for the tremendous talents of Peter Forsberg during Colorado’s first golden era.

I say first golden era because it’s clear now that the Avs are in a second golden age right now. MacKinnon is the start of that and how he ages on this new contract that will take him to his age-36 season will play a major factor in the Avs’ ability to win multiple Stanley Cups.

This deal puts MacKinnon on the path to be an all-time great Avalanche player and one of the great athletes in Colorado sports history. With one Stanley Cup ring already locked up, the all-time great legacy is directly in front of MacKinnon to chase right now.

As driven as he is to maximize his greatness (my words, not his), MacKinnon is the kind of special athlete you dream about when your team bottoms out and picks at the top of the draft. When guys like me talk about “franchise cornerstones”, we are talking about the Nathan MacKinnons of the world. Guys who set the tone for an entire franchise to fall in line and hold everyone accountable. Guys who let their greatness on the ice and legendary work ethic off it do all their talking.

Because I am who I am, I’ll give you all the fancystats and charts and graphs but they’ll just be visual confirmation of what I’ve already written and what you already know to be true about MacKinnon. He’s elite and in his prime.

MacKinnon certainly has work to do on the defensive portion of his game but his time as a high-end play-driver is obvious. He wasn’t quite as good last year as he struggled a lot in the first half to find any rhythm, but come the playoffs he was his normal dominant self.

Going back to the legacy portion of this, what previously seemed unfathomable in Forsberg getting bumped off of Avalanche Mount Rushmore has no become a reality. Right now, you could argue MacKinnon or Makar for the fourth spot next to Forsberg, Sakic, and Patrick Roy, but given another five years together (when Makar’s deal expires), both current Avs could soon bump Forsberg to the fifth spot and take their place in the Avalanche hierarchy.

It’s hard to appreciate history when it’s still happening in front of us, but I only mention this side of the connversation to try to build a proper context for just how special what we’re witnessing really is and how MacKinnon’s new contract locks him in to chase real history, like top-20 scorer in NHL history kind of thing.

It’s been a great ride for MacKinnon already as a member of the Colorado Avalanche. His new contract gives everyone the chance to believe the best is still to come in this relationship.