MacKinnon's Avalanche Roll Into Dallas to Test the Stars
Two Western Conference teams with something to prove meet Tuesday night at American Airlines Center, with Colorado carrying a slight edge in the standings at 3-2-0 against Dallas's 2-2-1. There's no model lean on this one — which, honestly, makes the individual matchups worth watching even more closely.
Let's start with the obvious: Nathan MacKinnon is doing Nathan MacKinnon things. Ten points through five games — five goals, five assists — puts him on a pace that demands defensive attention every single shift. When a player is producing at that clip this early in a season, the opposing coaching staff doesn't get to treat him as one problem among many. He becomes the problem, and everything else on Colorado's roster gets easier because of it. Mackenzie Blackwood is expected to start in net for the Avalanche, and how he handles Dallas's transition game will go a long way toward determining whether Colorado can protect that one-game cushion in the standings.
On the Dallas side, Mikko Rantanen has six points through his first games — two goals and four assists — which is a respectable start, though it pales next to what MacKinnon is doing on the other bench. That gap in production between the two teams' headliners is the central tension of this matchup. Jake Oettinger is expected to start for the Stars, and Dallas will need him sharp. A team sitting at 2-2-1 can't afford to fall further behind early in October, and Oettinger has historically been the kind of goaltender who keeps games close enough for his team to steal points.
With no validated model read available for tonight's game, there's no algorithmic thumb on the scale here — and that's fine. Sometimes the most honest thing you can say before a game is that it's genuinely open. What we do know is that MacKinnon's production is elite and unsustainable at this exact rate, which means Dallas has a narrow window to slow him down before he finds another gear. Colorado's 3-2-0 record suggests they're winning the games they should and dropping the ones that are tighter. Tonight, in a hostile building, is a legitimate test. Watch the goaltending battle between Blackwood and Oettinger — that's where this game gets decided.