{"id":535798,"date":"2026-04-02T02:04:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T02:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/535798\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T02:04:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T02:04:14","slug":"avalanche-star-nathan-mackinnon-becomes-first-to-50-goals-this-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/535798\/","title":{"rendered":"Avalanche star Nathan MacKinnon becomes first to 50 goals this season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>DENVER \u2014 Colorado&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/hockey\/nhl\/players\/nathan-mackinnon\/e440e013-e817-11e2-a133-f4ce4684ea4c\" class=\"sn-player-post-link\" target=\"_self\" data-player=\"e440e013-e817-11e2-a133-f4ce4684ea4c\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Nathan MacKinnon<\/a> became the first NHL player this season to reach 50 goals when his liner from up top beat Vancouver goaltender <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/hockey\/nhl\/players\/kevin-lankinen\/3567510e-daff-48ba-8789-58a042a16ad8\" class=\"sn-player-post-link\" target=\"_self\" data-player=\"3567510e-daff-48ba-8789-58a042a16ad8\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Kevin Lankinen<\/a> early in the first period on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n<p>He celebrated the goal with a little extra flair, too, sliding on his right knee while pumping his right glove.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the second 50-goal campaign of MacKinnon&#8217;s career. He became the third player in Colorado\/Quebec history to notch multiple 50-goal seasons, joining Hall of Famers Joe Sakic (twice) and Michel Goulet (four).<\/p>\n<p>MacKinnon also joins Milan Hejduk (2002-03) as the only skaters in franchise history to hit the 50-goal mark first during an NHL season.<\/p>\n<p>MacKinnon tied Tampa Bay&#8217;s Nikita Kucherov for second with 121 points. They are four behind league leader Connor McDavid of Edmonton.<\/p>\n<p>The 30-year-old MacKinnon turned in his fourth straight season of 110 or more points.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat&#8217;s where he&#8217;s gotten his production to over the last handful of seasons \u2014 high expectations,\u201d Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said before the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DENVER \u2014 Colorado&#8217;s Nathan MacKinnon became the first NHL player this season to reach 50 goals when his&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5116],"tags":[193,192,144,5277,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-535798","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\/116332662845055631","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535798","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=535798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}