McDavid, Oilers set for ‘elite’ test against MacKinnon, Avalanche

EDMONTON -- Connor McDavid is always up for a challenge and expects a big one going head-to-head against Nathan MacKinnon. 

Two of the NHL’s best players and leading scorers will square off when the Edmonton Oilers host the Colorado Avalanche at Rogers Place on Saturday (10 p.m. ET; CBC, SNE, SNO, SNW, TVAS2, ALT). 

“It’s always exciting going up against the League’s best and he would certainly fall under that category,” McDavid, the Oilers captain, said Friday. “A bunch of them would over there -- (forward Mikko) Rantanen, (defenseman Cale) Makar, (defenseman Devon) Toews -- they have an elite group over there and I love testing myself against those type of guys.”

This will be the first of three games between the teams this season. Colorado (42-20-5) is tied with the Dallas Stars and Winnipeg Jets for first place in the Central Division, and Edmonton (40-21-3) is second in the Pacific Division, nine points behind the first-place Vancouver Canucks.

Colorado won its fifth straight game Wednesday when it defeated Vancouver 4-3 in overtime, battling back from a 3-0 deficit. MacKinnon said it was the Avalanche’s best win of the season.

Edmonton is 7-1-1 in its past nine games and is coming off a 7-2 win against the Washington Capitals on Wednesday.

“I think it should be a really good game, obviously two really good teams that are playing well,” McDavid said. “They’re playing really well, they have some special players over there and they’re doing a lot of really good things.”

MacKinnon had a goal and an assist Wednesday and has 30 points (10 goals, 20 assists) during a 14-game point streak. He is one of two players McDavid is chasing in the NHL scoring race. The Avalanche center leads the League with 115 points (42 goals, 73 assists) in 67 games, followed by Tampa Bay Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov, who has 112 points (39 goals, 73 assists) in 65 games.

“He seems to be scoring a lot from that one-timer side (left face-off circle). I don’t remember him doing that a ton earlier in his career,” McDavid said of MacKinnon. “It makes the power play so dangerous. They have two great players running it on the half-wall (MacKinnon and Rantanen) and obviously Makar running it from the top. It’s going to be a pretty good power-play unit. He seems to be scoring a lot from over there. Maybe he’s shooting the puck a little bit more, I don’t know, but he’s playing really good hockey.”

With 35 points (four goals, 31 assists) in his past 16 games, McDavid is making a hard charge for his sixth scoring title with 106 points (25 goals, 81 assists) in 62 games, and the center is on pace to become the first player to reach 100 assists in a season since Wayne Gretzky had 122 with the Los Angeles Kings in 1990-91. 

“As a fan it’s exciting seeing two of the best players go head-to head, MacKinnon leading the NHL in scoring and you’ve got McDavid who’s been in that position many times,” Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said. “As a coach, that’s my first priority, and looking at it in that aspect, we have to think about ways to limit his opportunities, whether that’s matchups or system thing. But if we’re going to have success, we have to limit the amount of opportunities he has.” 

Along with vying for the Art Ross Trophy, awarded to the NHL’s points leader, McDavid and MacKinnon are candidates to win the Hart Trophy as NHL most valuable player.

McDavid is the reigning Hart Trophy winner and also won it in 2020-21 and 2016-17. MacKinnon has never won the Hart, finishing as runner-up to Taylor Hall of the New Jersey Devils in 2017-18 and Leon Draisaitl of the Oilers in 2019-20.

MacKinnon did win the Stanley Cup in 2022 with the Avalanche, who swept McDavid and the Oilers in the best-of-7 Western Conference Final along the way. 

“He’s very powerful, very strong, fast,” Edmonton defenseman Darnell Nurse said of MacKinnon. “He’s the full package as a player and if you give him an inch, he seems to make it a foot. For us, when we’re defending we have to be quick, we have to be moving our feet and at the same time, we have to be aware of everything else that’s going on.”