When Nathan MacKinnon was growing up in Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, Jon Greenwood became a coach, a teacher and a mentor for the burgeoning hockey phenom.
Greenwood coached MacKinnon at multiple levels in Cole Harbour and at Maritime Hockey Academy in neighboring Dartmouth. After MacKinnon reached the NHL and won the Calder Trophy as the league’s top rookie in 2013-14, Greenwood accepted an assistant coaching job with the QMJHL’s Halifax Mooseheads, the team MacKinnon had led to the Memorial Cup in 2013.
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MacKinnon became the No. 1 pick in the 2013 NHL draft, a first for the Halifax franchise. Nico Hischier was the second Mooseheads player to achieve the feat four years later when the Devils selected him first overall.
That means that Greenwood has had the opportunity to coach both of Halifax’s No. 1 picks at different stages in their development.
The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn explores the statistical similarities between Hischier and MacKinnon after three seasons in the NHL, but physically there aren’t many comparisons.
“As a player, I don’t see a whole lot in common,” Greenwood said. “Nate is such an athlete and has so much explosiveness. All of that is just off the charts. Nico does a lot more subtle things around the ice. He’s maybe not going to jump off the ice for an average fan, but he does so many good, subtle things.
“I think the one thing they have in common is their competitiveness. I think competitiveness and will are comparable in a lot of great players, and those two have a lot of those similar traits.”
Hischier was the sixth pick in the 2016 CHL Import Draft. The five players selected ahead of him have combined for 41 NHL games. He was a phenom in Switzerland, dominating youth games against older players and making his debut in the top Swiss league with SC Bern at 15 years old.
He was not Jack Hughes or Alexis Lafreniere, players who were pegged as the top prospects in their classes years before the draft.
“Nico was a guy that just quietly arrived and went about his game,” Greenwood said. “There definitely wasn’t a lot of self-promotion or anything like that from him. He just sort of played the game and let that do the talking for him. It took him a little while.
“He had six points in his first eight games. That was like, ‘OK, pretty good.’ Almost a point per game at 17 years old, but kind of ho-hum and you don’t think first overall pick when you hear that. But then in the 14th game he played here, he had six points — three goals and three assists. He sort of took off from there. He showed up from a small town and he’s a pretty quiet, pretty humble kid, and I think he took a little bit to get used to everything off and on the ice. Once he got going, it was just a snowball that went downhill and got bigger and bigger and didn’t stop. He went to world juniors and was arguably the best forward in the tournament as a 17-year-old playing for Switzerland.”
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Hischier became a candidate for the top pick after his star turn at the WJC. He racked up 38 goals and 86 points in 57 games for the Mooseheads. His per-game production wasn’t far off MacKinnon’s (75 points in 44 games), but the Avalanche star also had fellow future NHLers Jonathan Drouin and Martin Frk on the roster.
Hischier did show off his franchise player potential in the QMJHL playoffs, even though it was a much shorter run.
“Nico certainly took our team on his back that year,” Greenwood said. “The best compliment I can give Nico is you always felt like you were in the game when he was on the ice. We finished 15th in the Q that year and we played the second overall team in the playoffs. We won Game One. We stretched it six games. One went to triple overtime. I think he had seven points in those six games, but he was playing unheard-of minutes as a centerman. It was easily 30 minutes per game.
Minutes after the series ended, Greenwood had a conversation with one of the opposing coaches that stuck with him.
“I said to him, ‘What a series. We were pretty happy just to push you guys,'” Greenwood said. “And he said, ‘Well, it certainly helped that you had that cheat code No. 13.’ That’s how he described it. I know, when Nico was on the ice, it didn’t feel like No. 2 vs. No. 15 anymore.”
Hischier didn’t win the Calder Trophy in 2017, but it still was a successful rookie season. He ended it as the No. 1 center on a playoff team and his linemate, Taylor Hall, won the Hart Trophy as league MVP, just edging out MacKinnon.
While MacKinnon won the Calder as a rookie and just missed the Hart in his fifth season, the three years in between did not go quite as planned. He failed to match his goals (24) and points (63) totals from his rookie year in any of them.
The Avalanche, after making the playoffs in MacKinnon’s first year, missed out each of the next three years. Colorado had the worst record in the league in 2017, but New Jersey jumped past them in the draft lottery to land Hischier.
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MacKinnon had drawn comparisons to Sidney Crosby, who also hails from Cole Harbour, his entire life. He won the Memorial Cup and the Calder, while Crosby had finished as a runner-up for both his rookie year. But MacKinnon’s NHL career did not immediately rise to superstardom like Crosby’s did, with the Penguins center winning league MVP honors as a teenager.
“I mean it sounds obvious, but it’s a hard league,” Greenwood said. “Not many 19- and 20-year-old players are dominant players in the league. You have a good 18-year-old season and maybe that’s a little too much, too soon for you. I think it’s a lot of figuring everything out and getting used to the schedule and the travel and the grind. You have guys that are between 18 and 21, they’re also still growing. They don’t really know what weight to play at, or how their body is going to be fully developed when they’re in the prime of their careers. I think that’s a tough age to play in the best league in the world.”
Hischier’s second and third seasons played out in similar fashion. The team success disappeared and his traditional stats have dipped each year.
“I felt all right,” Hischier said about his third NHL season. “I mean, I felt like I took a couple steps in a couple areas. But I’m always still like, if the team (doesn’t have) success, I’m not really happy about it. We can be better, for sure.”
It did happen eventually for MacKinnon. He has now produced three straight 90-points seasons and is a top contender for the Hart Trophy again this year. The Avalanche reached Game 7 of the second round in 2019 and are one of the top contenders to claim the Stanley Cup if the NHL’s return to play plan materializes.
“I think it took Nate a couple of years to figure out (the strength and conditioning) side of things. Now, he’s so dialed in on that side that I don’t think there is any stopping him. For Nico, it might be a similar thing. He could still be growing and adapting. You want to put on more weight but also not lose your speed. That’s tough for a young player. Let’s not kid ourselves — it also helps being surrounded by some good players to help on the points side of things.”
MacKinnon found a way to harness his world-class physical tools, and the Avalanche have surrounded him with other immensely skilled players like Mikko Rantanen and Cale Makar (the “consolation prize” for Colorado at No. 4 in the 2017 draft). Very few players, Greenwood said, have the combination of speed, skill and intangible traits that MacKinnon does. It’s why he’s about to finish in the top six of the MVP voting for the third straight year.
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“I was at home watching ‘The Last Dance’ like everyone else the past couple months,” Greenwood said, “and every time something would come on the screen about (Michael) Jordan and his insane competitiveness, my wife and I would look at each other and go, ‘Oh my god, that’s Nate.’ It’s just uncanny. We chuckled about it, because we were like, ‘We know somebody like that.’
Hischier has Hughes, but they aren’t likely to spend much time together at even strength moving forward. The huge point totals may never come for Hischier, but there are other ways to measure his value. He was one of the most valuable forwards in the NHL in his first two seasons, according to Evolving-Hockey’s goals above replacement, a catch-all stat that measures overall value, similar to WAR in baseball.
“Points obviously are important, but there’s so much more in hockey that counts for winning games,” Hischier said. “There are little things that don’t show up in the scoresheets and people sometimes don’t get too much credit for that. (It’s what) you have to do to win a game, or even better say, to win a Stanley Cup.”
Hischier’s GAR through his first two seasons, 31.4, was 21st among NHL forwards in that span. While every one of Hischier’s coaches has praised his defensive acumen, GAR measures his highest value in even-strength offense and his ability to draw more penalties than he takes. Hischier was the third most-valuable forward in the NHL over his first two seasons in that category, and he climbed to second behind Johnny Gaudreau through the first three.
Hischier’s overall GAR dipped significantly in 2019-20, though he played fewer games because of injury and the coronavirus pandemic and lost Hall to a trade in December.
“I think Nico is going to be a player that is really dependable and counted on, maybe more like a (Jonathan) Toews,” Greenwood said. “Maybe he doesn’t score 40 goals or 90 points in a year, but he’s going to be a guy you want on your team in the last minute up a goal or down a goal and a very strong, steady, dependable player.
“He’s not going to sacrifice the team ever to get points. I’m not saying Nate would either, but a lot of high-end players have that tendency at times. That’s just not in Nico. He’s going to do whatever his team needs.”
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Hischier has plenty of time to improve as his body matures. Comparisons to elite two-way centers like Toews, Patrice Bergeron and Sean Couturier are fairer than expecting him to rocket into the stratosphere of Crosby, MacKinnon and Connor McDavid.
Hischier will find ways to contribute that show up more in the advanced stats sheet. The Devils could help his traditional stats by finding him a wingman like Toews had in Chicago with Patrick Kane. While Hischier and MacKinnon are connected by their backstory, how they create value for their teams might not be that similar in the years ahead.
(Top photo: Andre Ringuette / Getty Images)