Still, he did as instructed, playing right wing most of that season with Taylor Cammarata up the middle and Tyler Vesel on the left. It was a learning process for MacKinnon. He expected his teammates to think the game like he did, to see what he saw out on the sheet. Bragnalo remembers having to sit his elite winger down and explain that he was simply different. “Nathan, he can’t make that play,” the coach told him after MacKinnon showed frustration with a teammate. “He’s just not skilled enough. You are, but he isn’t.”

But even in that unfamiliar situation — shifted out of his natural position, flanked by teammates who couldn’t always keep up with the plays he was stringing together — MacKinnon’s bullish approach to putting points on the board ensured the trio was successful. The chemistry with his line was instant, and prolific, just as the coach had envisioned.

“That first game, I mean, he was unreal,” Bragnalo remembers. “We talked after, his line was incredible, and I’m like, ‘Nathan, I’m pretty sure you’ll be fine, dude.’”

The trio led the Sabres to the USA Hockey National Championship final, finishing 1-2-3 in team scoring that season. MacKinnon collected a casual 45 goals and 93 points in 40 games, while Cammarata and Vesel amassed a combined 247 points beside him. “It was just crazy,” Bragnalo says.

The coach’s instinct about his young phenom had been spot-on: There was enough potential greatness in MacKinnon’s galloping stride, and whip-quick hands, that it poured out onto the ice regardless of where he slotted into the lineup. A decade-and-a-half later, that remains true.

Three years after winning the Stanley Cup, and a year after an explosive campaign that netted him his first Hart Trophy, MacKinnon’s bid for a second championship comes on the heels of a campaign as tumultuous as we’ve seen from a contender. First, came a December blockbuster to swap out Colorado’s No. 1 goaltender. A month later, the front office shipped out a franchise icon — and one of MacKinnon’s closest friends. Then, at the trade deadline, a final slew of deals shook up the rest of the roster. The moves have seen MacKinnon skate with a rotating cast of linemates since losing longtime top-line partner Mikko Rantanen. But as was the case back at Shattuck St-Mary’s all those years ago, the Avs superstar has proven impervious to his circumstances. Armed with the lessons he’s learned since that first day in Minnesota, the now-29-year-old is authoring another all-world campaign — one that has him in the thick of the MVP debate once again, and has his Avs hunting for their second Cup in four years.

Tied at a game apiece in a tough first-round bout with Rantanen and the Dallas Stars, the message from No. 29 seems clear: It doesn’t matter where he lines up, who hops over the boards with him or who stands in his way — give Nathan MacKinnon the puck and an open lane, and he’ll do what he’s always done.

It was in 2017-18 that MacKinnon put it all together and emerged as a nightly problem for the opposition. After a 16-goal, 53-point season the year prior, the then-22-year-old lit the league on fire with 39 goals and 97 points. The explosive campaign netted him his first Hart Trophy nomination — he finished second in voting, behind Taylor Hall — and announced his arrival among the league’s elite.

Barrie remembers the shift, as well as the all-consuming commitment that allowed MacKinnon to turn potential into performance.

“I think he just dialled in his fitness and completely gave himself to the game of hockey,” the defender says. “And made that his sole focus and his life. He came back that summer for training camp and he was so dialled and focused on his nutrition and his program he had going with Andy [O’Brien, his trainer].

“It was just another example of a guy who bought in fully and committed himself. There was lot of change. He did all the blood tests and figured out what works for his body. He didn’t leave any stone unturned, really. He was trying to figure out how he could feel the best he could on the ice. I think there was a big transition that first year, and then he just continued to figure out ways to get better and improve.”

MacKinnon hasn’t looked back since. The Avs talisman improved his scoring pace in each of the three seasons following that 97-point breakout, earning two more Hart nominations, building towards the 2021-22 campaign that saw him lead Colorado to its first Stanley Cup in 21 years. In the wake of that title season, MacKinnon managed to raise his level again, reaching the century mark in 2022-23 before obliterating his previous bests with a 51-goal, 140-point surge last year. The sterling season earned him his first Hart Trophy and an MVP nod from his fellow players, too. And this season, MacKinnon was in the thick of it once more, amassing 116 points, 71 more than any other forward on the Avs’ current roster, and putting himself right back in the Hart conversation.

Head coach Jared Bednar has been with the organization since MacKinnon’s fourth season, before he became consistently dominant. “He continues to impress me,” the coach said in a press conference last month, after MacKinnon notched his 1,000th career point. “Because when I first came here, he was battling to try to hit 100 points. He’s grown a lot as a player. He’s a leader.”

Barrie traces it all back to that summer in 2017, when MacKinnon went all-in on his pursuit of greatness. When everything changed.

“We used to go for beers the night before a game, and then we wouldn’t do beers the night before a game anymore,” Barrie says, laughing. “He’s obviously figured it out, and in the last seven years or so now he’s been pretty dominant.

“It’s been fun to watch the Evolution of Nate.”

Necas played his first 20 games as a member of the Avalanche alongside MacKinnon, before being moved down the lineup. But in Game 1 against Dallas, he found himself back on No. 29’s wing. Regardless of who’s beside him, though, he and his linemates are “taking notes” and “talking after every shift,” trying to get the best out of one another, trying to generate as much as they can, as quickly as they can.

That hunt for instant chemistry is a must for a club that’s experienced as much roster turnover as Colorado — moves that have had a direct impact on MacKinnon. Aside from Necas, in the wake of the Rantanen blockbuster No.29’s seen Jonathan Drouin, Brock Nelson, Artturi Lehkonen and Valeri Nichushkin all skate on his line.

For his part, McKinnon has shown no real ill effects of the upheaval, spurring his club on to another top-three finish in the Central Division. That the Avs remained a 100-point Western Conference behemoth throughout that ride, and arrived at the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs a contender still, is due in no small part to MacKinnon’s insistence on remaining among the game’s elite — and his ability to elevate the play of the teammates around him.

“The thing about Nate is he’s been doing this a while, and he’s got such a good idea of what makes him successful on the ice,” says Barrie. “You can swap linemates in and out and obviously he’ll find chemistry with them. It doesn’t matter who you play him with — he’s going to play his same way and play his game. And with Nate, teams adjust to what he’s doing.”

It’s been that way since the beginning, says Cole Murphy, one of MacKinnon’s earliest linemates. The two first teamed up as six-year-old Timbits, then reunited in Atom with the Cole Harbour Red Wings, where they played together all the way up until MacKinnon set off for Minnesota.

“Everybody wanted to play with him,” says Murphy. He remembers the speed and smarts a young MacKinnon displayed even then, and the fact that he could wire the puck over the net and it’d make a booming noise when it collided with the glass — pretty impressive when you’re nine. “It was very easy to play with him, too. He just makes everyone around him better. His skillset, his drive, his passion, it’s contagious. You see someone putting that much in and working that hard, you just want to give back and do everything you can to mimic that.”

Barrie felt much the same during his time with No. 29.

“Nate was probably my favourite teammate I’ve ever had as far as chemistry went,” the blue-liner says, also pointing out they’re both righties, which helped. “I got to know his game pretty well. He was going to drive the puck and push defenders back with speed and take it to the net if he could. But if not, I knew he was pulling up, and I was trying to jump into that late fourth-man’s ice.”

While from afar MacKinnon’s game might seem an unpredictable, dizzying bit of brilliance, for those out on the sheet with him, it felt far more straightforward, says Barrie.

“He’s a pretty direct player — he’s kind of up-and-down, north-south. Obviously, when he gets in the zone, he can take it east-west, but he’s not making high-risk plays,” the defender explains. “I think Nate’s fairly responsible in the way he plays. He obviously creates a ton of offence, but I think he does it in the right way. I always found it easy to read off him — and I knew he wasn’t going to turn it over and put us both in a bad spot.”

It’s no coincidence that the list of teammates who’ve found easy chemistry with MacKinnon is so long, Barrie explains. That list is highlighted by Avs defender Cale Makar, who finished the season with 92 points himself, tops among all defencemen and ninth-most in the NHL at any position. “You can just see what they’re able to do,” Barrie says of the pair, before adding with a laugh: “It’s similar to me and Nate, just times a hundred.”

Necas echoes the sentiment — the key to ensuring chemistry with the captain is simple, in his eyes.

“Play your game,” the winger says, “and good things will happen.”

Barrie, too, has more than a few stories about “getting into it” with MacKinnon on the ice and then laughing about it afterward. One game, as their side was trailing, the Avs were granted a 5-on-3 with barely any time left on the clock. MacKinnon won the draw back to Barrie on the point. “The puck took a bad hop and bounced over my stick, went out of the zone, and pretty much killed the 5-on-3,” Barrie remembers. “He was like, ‘Put your effing foot behind the puck. Keep that in!’”

Barrie started yelling back: “It took a bounce!”

“But then after that, anytime I was on a 5-on-3 or a power play, even if the puck looked flat I’d always put my foot behind it. And since then, it’s probably kept the puck in a handful of times,” Barrie says with a laugh.

The defender’s quick to point out that MacKinnon isn’t always right, though. And No. 29 knows it.

“He’s just passionate,” Barrie says. “He’s one of my best friends and I think the emotions he feels, he feels them all and he feels them big, so they come out.”

After more than a decade in Denver, in which he’s hung a championship banner at Ball Arena, established himself as one of the best players in the world and earned a Hart Trophy, little has changed for MacKinnon. His fervent pursuit of an even higher level hasn’t waned.

“He wants to win. That’s what he’s there for,” Barrie says. “He’s there to push the team to be as good as it can be, and he’s pushing himself to be the best player in the world every night.”

As the Avalanche head home for Game 3 of their first-round bout, the Stars have already found themselves on the other end of that all-consuming desire. The Colorado pivot was the unequivocal engine that drove Game 1 of the series, putting up two goals and an assist to lead the Avs to a 5-1 win. The Stars punched back with a 4-3 overtime victory in Game 2, but couldn’t keep MacKinnon from adding another goal to his pile.

For those who’ve been around MacKinnon since the beginning, his continued ascent is hardly a shocker.

“He’s still trying to get better, still striving to improve,” Greenwood says. “Some of the people around him in his life, we would joke about it. Like, I wonder if, [after] finally getting that Cup, he would finally feel a little bit satisfied and maybe take his foot off the gas in the summer a little bit. But no. That summer he was back at it, and as fierce as ever.

“That should come as no surprise. That’s who he is.”

It didn’t take long for Necas to get that same sense. It’s been just under three months since the winger made the move to Colorado, setting up shop in his new hockey home after spending the first near-decade of his career in Raleigh. He says Denver is a great city, though he’s still getting to know it. His teammates have been great, too. He’s still getting to know many of them as well.

But there was one thing about Colorado and its hockey team that was evident from the jump, one thing Necas saw clear as crystal from the first time he took the ice in Avalanche colours, hopping over the boards alongside MacKinnon: That fire.

“He’s intense, right? He does everything to win,” Necas says of No. 29. “That’s the biggest thing I would say: He does everything, on or off the ice, to win.

“He wants to win. He wants to win bad.”