{"id":472696,"date":"2026-02-26T08:56:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T08:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/472696\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T08:56:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T08:56:12","slug":"avalanche-star-nathan-mackinnon-misses-first-game-after-olympics-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/472696\/","title":{"rendered":"Avalanche star Nathan MacKinnon misses first game after Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SALT LAKE CITY \u2014 Colorado Avalanche star Nathan MacKinnon will not play for the club in its first game back from the 2026 Winter Olympics break.<\/p>\n<p>He is not in the lineup against the Utah Mammoth because of \u201cmaintenance,\u201d according to a team spokesman. This is the first game MacKinnon has missed this season for the Avs.<\/p>\n<p>MacKinnon played in all six games for Canada at the Olympics in Milan, earning a silver medal after the United States won the final, 2-1, in overtime in an instant classic. He finished the tournament with four goals and seven points.<\/p>\n<p>The 2024 league MVP is a top contender for the Hart Trophy and Ted Lindsay Award again this season. MacKinnon leads the NHL with 40 goals and is second to Edmonton\u2019s Connor McDavid with 93 points.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/myaccount.denverpost.com\/dp\/preference\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Want more Avalanche news? Sign up for the Avalanche Insider to get all our NHL analysis.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SALT LAKE CITY \u2014 Colorado Avalanche star Nathan MacKinnon will not play for the club in its first&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5101],"tags":[3189,144,599,93,5137,5,4,2602,3358,5138,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-472696","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-red-wings","8":"tag-2026-winter-olympics","9":"tag-colorado-avalanche","10":"tag-detroit","11":"tag-detroit-red-wings","12":"tag-detroitredwings","13":"tag-hockey","14":"tag-nhl","15":"tag-olympics","16":"tag-red-wings","17":"tag-redwings","18":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116136102942015532","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}