TORONTO — Nathan MacK­in­non col­lect­ed a pass from child­hood hero-turned-pal, split a cou­ple of play­ers mas­querad­ing as defend­ers and pulled off what looked a bit like an homage to the guy who sent him the puck.

MacK­in­non had a pair of goals at the NHL All-Star Game, but the sec­ond one will prob­a­bly find its way onto some high­light reels. He flipped a back­hand­ed shot from between the hash marks over the left shoul­der of Flori­da goalie Sergei Bobrovsky.

Sid­ney Cros­by has been many things dur­ing his Hall of Fame career, includ­ing a role mod­el and even­tu­al work­out part­ner for MacK­in­non. He’s also been the own­er of one of the best back­hand shots in league his­to­ry, so MacK­in­non scor­ing such a pret­ty one on a pass from Cros­by was a fun high­light from the weekend.

“It was great. We had a lot of fun,” MacK­in­non said of play­ing with Cros­by. “We kind of blew the lead there. Not many guys on our team know how to (penal­ty kill). I guess I didn’t think of that when I was draft­ing. … Wish we had (Andrew) Cogliano and (Logan) O’Connor here.”

MacK­in­non was the cap­tain and gen­er­al man­ag­er of his team, draft­ing the rest of his squad with assis­tant Cale Makar and celebri­ty cap­tain Tate McRae on Thurs­day night. Alexan­dar Georgiev had a strong 10 min­utes to start for Team MacK­in­non, but Con­nor McDavid’s team scored twice on Jere­my Sway­man with the goalie pulled and then won their mini-game in a shootout.

MacK­in­non, Makar and Cros­by played togeth­er in the 3‑on‑3 for­mat. Makar assist­ed on both of MacKinnon’s goal, includ­ing set­ting him for a break­away on the first one.

It was a pro­duc­tive week­end for the Avs’ rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Makar won the hard­est shot con­test and MacK­in­non won the one-timer event dur­ing the skills com­pe­ti­tion Fri­day night.

Georgiev was the big win­ner of the trio. He won the goaltender’s por­tion of the one-on-one event Fri­day night, which earned him a $100,000 prize. He only allowed one goal on 11 shots in the game Sat­ur­day, turn­ing away sev­er­al break­away and odd-man rush attempts.

He made an event-high nine saves on Con­nor McDavid in the one-on-one com­pe­ti­tion, mix­ing in a few poke checks to get the even­tu­al skills com­pe­ti­tion win­ner off his game.

“Yeah, I got a cou­ple mes­sages (after Fri­day night),” Georgiev said. “Just peo­ple con­grat­u­lat­ing and hap­py for me. It was a real­ly cool event.

“Over­all, it was a super-fun experience.”

MacK­in­non and Cros­by togeth­er on a line cer­tain­ly evoked images of what could be com­ing after the NHL, NHLPA and IIHF announced a return to best-on-best inter­na­tion­al hock­ey Fri­day. NHL play­ers from Cana­da, Fin­land, Swe­den and the Unit­ed States will par­tic­i­pate in the 2025 NHL 4 Nations Face-off in ear­ly 2025, then return to the Win­ter Olympics in 2026 for the first time in 12 years.

“That would be great,” MacK­in­non said about poten­tial­ly play­ing with Cros­by in an inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion for the first time. “I’d be hap­py to play (on his ) right wing. I could def­i­nite­ly adjust to being a winger pret­ty eas­i­ly. It would be fun.”

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