At best, Ryan Graves was a cumbersome teenage hockey player. His skating stride was inefficient and his stick-handling unwieldy. Boyhood buddy Nathan MacKinnon called him clumsy.
MacKinnon now calls Graves his NHL teammate for the Avalanche. The proud Nova Scotians grew up four hours apart — MacKinnon in Cole Harbour and Graves in Yarmouth — but they knew each other from spring hockey tournaments as kids and from the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League from 2011-13 as young men.
“He was always huge growing up, always the biggest kid on the ice,” MacKinnon said of Graves, who now stands 6-foot-5 and 226 pounds and was partnered with Tyson Barrie on Colorado’s second pairing before being scratched in Friday’s game at San Jose.