Jets veteran centre Mark Scheifele, who also scored twice, found numerous words of praise for the 30-year-old MacKinnon.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s absolutely fantastic,\u201d Scheifele said of the fellow Canadian. \u201cHe\u2019s an absolute horse out there. He\u2019s a guy that works on his game so tirelessly.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the other side, he\u2019s a fun guy to watch. Makes a lot of plays, a lot of little plays, even that a lot of people don\u2019t notice. So, he\u2019s one of the best, if not the best, player in the league. And he shows it every single night. And it\u2019s impressive to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scheifele leads Winnipeg with 34 goals and set a career-high 88 points in his 72nd game of the season.<\/p>\n
Bednar pointed out MacKinnon went hard to the net twice, scoring on the power play 13 seconds into the third period to give Colorado a 2-1 lead.<\/p>\n
The 2024 Hart Trophy winner did the same on a rush with Artturi Lehkonen, tipping in Lehkonen\u2019s pass at 3:55 to make it 3-1. Lehkonen returned after missing 11 games with an upper-body injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like the fact (MacKinnon) got rewarded for going to the net, for going to that inside ice,\u201d Bednar said. \u201cBut, obviously, both of them are big difference-making plays for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
MacKinnon leads the Avalanche in goals and points (117) and is a key reason the team sits atop the league (48-13-10).<\/p>\n
Colorado\u2019s victory in Winnipeg capped off a 4-0-0 road trip and extends the team\u2019s point streak to five games (4-0-1).<\/p>\n
\u201cGood defensive hockey overall,\u201d MacKinnon said. \u201cObviously, four in a row on the road is a great road trip.\u201d<\/p>\n
The play of Mackenzie Blackwood, who made 22 saves, continues the team\u2019s strong tandem in net that includes Scott Wedgewood, MacKinnon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe two he let in were not on him at all, so he played awesome,\u201d he said. \u201cOur goalies have been great all season.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blackwood returned the compliment to the guys in front of him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a hell of a team in here,\u201d the netminder said. \u201cIt helps when all the guys are clicking.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody\u2019s a big piece of it, right down to the guy that plays the least or the most. Everybody has a role to play, so that\u2019s how we think in here.\u201d<\/p>\n
The teams play a rematch Saturday when the Jets (30-30-12) travel to Denver.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had our looks, we had some opportunities, not as clean as we\u2019d hoped,\u201d Winnipeg head coach Scott Arniel said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Saturday, we\u2019re going to have to get inside and throw some pucks into the blue paint and look for some greasy goals because they do a good job of trying to keep you to the outside, as we try to do to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 27, 2026.<\/p>\n
Judy Owen, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jets veteran centre Mark Scheifele, who also scored twice, found numerous words of praise for the 30-year-old MacKinnon.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5116],"tags":[193,192,144,5277,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-525473","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-colorado-avalanche","8":"tag-avalanche","9":"tag-colorado","10":"tag-colorado-avalanche","11":"tag-coloradoavalanche","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116300623715314168","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525473","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=525473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}