MacKinnon Leaves Bloody, Then Returns With Two Assists After Fighting Hintz

Nathan MacKinnon does not fight much any more, which is exactly why Tuesday night in Dallas travelled. Six games into the season, the Colorado superstar has dropped the gloves twice, and this time he came back from the locker room with a cut across the bridge of his nose, two assists, and a 3-2 win over the Stars that felt, as Reuters put it, like October played at a playoff temperature.

What happened in the fight?

It built the way star fights usually do, out of a battle neither player would concede. MacKinnon and Roope Hintz traded cross-checks in the Avalanche’s zone midway through the second period, Hintz swiped back, and the gloves came off, Yardbarker reports. Hintz landed three hard rights, the best of them square on MacKinnon’s nose, opening a cut on the bridge. MacKinnon skated off for repairs and was gone for nearly eight minutes, Reuters reports, while Hintz sat in the penalty box icing his knuckles, USA Today reports. MacKinnon returned before the second period ended. Hintz, for his part, also scored in the game, and the fight did nothing to slow either man’s night: MacKinnon finished with two assists, one of them on Martin Necas’s second goal.

Why is MacKinnon fighting again?

That is the open question of Colorado’s first six games. He fought Los Angeles defenceman Brandt Clarke in the season opener as well, Yardbarker reports, after not getting into a fight in a couple of years, Reuters reports. Nothing about his scoring has changed: five goals and seven assists in six games, as the reigning Maurice Richard winner and the 2023-24 Hart Trophy winner. What has changed is the willingness. The Hart and the scoring titles were never built on this part of the game, and a player with 1,154 career points has the most to lose from a broken hand or a worse cut than Tuesday’s. His coaches will read it as edge-setting in a division where the code around who fights whom is being argued about in public this month; his medical staff will read the scar. Both readings are available because the fight happened at all.

How did Colorado win the game around the fight?

With a short bench and its best defenceman at home. The Avalanche played with 17 skaters: Cale Makar stayed in Colorado because his wife was expecting twins, and Zachary L’Heureux was a late scratch with an upper-body injury, Reuters reports. Lehkonen opened the scoring in the first period, Seguin tied it on a late power play, and Necas scored twice in the second, the second on a 5-on-3, to build a 3-1 lead that Blackwood’s 24 saves protected. It was a recovery for Blackwood, who had given up five goals in a loss to Toronto on Saturday. Dallas had its own absence, and a notable one: Wyatt Johnston’s illness ended a run of playing every single game across four full seasons and the first five of this one.

How does the fight sit in this season’s discipline picture?

At the harmless end of a month that has had worse. Frank Nazar’s hit on Bo Horvat drew a two-game suspension, and Jeremy Lauzon’s unpunished hit on Oliver Ekman-Larsson is still being argued about, while Connor Bedard’s return in Chicago showed the other side of star availability, a captain back a month early. A consensual fight between two first-line forwards, both of whom stayed in the game and produced, is the version of hockey violence the league is comfortable selling. The blood is what made it a story rather than a line in the box score: the sport’s best scorer, stitched up and back on the ice inside eight minutes.

What happens next between these teams?

They play again on Wednesday night, in Denver, and nobody needs to manufacture the storyline. Reuters reports Wedgewood is expected in net for Colorado and DeSmith for Dallas, with both teams on the same rest after Tuesday’s game. Bednar framed the back-to-back as a useful playoff rehearsal, the same opponent on consecutive nights with adjustments in between. The first adjustment question is MacKinnon’s nose, and the second is whether Hintz, who scored, fought and won his fight, gets the same welcome at altitude that MacKinnon got in Texas.