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Nathan MacKinnon practices, likely to return at Toronto

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Nathan MacKinnon was back out there this morning, in a regular, blue jersey at Colorado Avalanche practice.

Look, here’s proof:

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After practice, Jared Bednar said MacKinnon likely will play Wednesday night in Toronto.

“As of right now, it looks like he’s good to go,” Bednar said. “We’ll see how the next couple of days play out.”

On how MacKinnon looked today, Bednar said, “he was fantastic. One of the hardest-working players on the ice, high tempo to his game. You can tell he’s been doing a lot of that work we talked about the other day with Shawn (Allard) and getting healthy. We know he’s in top condition and he was pushing the pace today to try and make things happen at game speed.”

MacKinnon wasn’t made available to the media following practice.

J.T. Compher was out there this morning as well, but in a non-contact jersey. He suffered an upper body injury against San Jose on November 13 and the prognosis a couple of days later was that he would be out approximately a month.

Bednar said Compher is “getting close. So, we started with him at a month. I don’t know the exact day he’s on right now, but he’s probably at least another week. He’s skating on his own. He’s doing a lot of things. He’s getting better every day. There’s still some things that are bothering him, so it’s just how quick he works through that. We will find out in the next week.”

Also Monday, Martin Kaut was back in a regular jersey, and Pavel Francouz was more active overall.

UPDATE: Kaut has been re-activated, but he was sent back to the Colorado Eagles.

The Avs will not practice tomorrow. They will instead board a plane for Toronto, where they start a five-game road trip Wednesday night.

(Terry Frei contributed to this report)

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