#natty mac

ok are you ready? are you seated? let’s go

so in february 2020 right before the pandemic hit, the avs held a charity auction via their WAG charity organisation, called Avs’ Better Halves. The idea was that each player makes a custom basket with their partner full of their favourite everyday items, people bid on the baskets, the money goes to charity.

well, nate who was allegedly single at the time decided not to build a solo basket like some other players on the team and instead we got the

buddy basket

what is the buddy basket, you might ask? well, of course, with no explanation whatsoever, the partner basket was full of merch of both nate and sid. and like, some dog toys i guess.

the crazy thing about it is that the sid jersey included a certificate of authenticity from the pittsburgh penguins, and the reason that’s my roman empire is that this means that sid had to GO TO HIS TEAM, ask if he could take part in another team’s WAG charity auction and if he could include his merch and ALSO could they give him a certificate of authenticity pretty please.

I'm sorry, I thought Nate eating ass was fanon. Are you telling me this is an actual canon fact??

god i love when people don’t realise how much “fanon” around sid and nate is actually canon. it’s like heroin to me. also bc it’s like. 90% of the stuff in fics (which is probably why people assume it’s fanon but. oh boy it’s not. there’s shockingly little fanon around these two, mostly because canon is so abundant).

yes, nathan mackinnon is a known ass-eater. let me direct you to this post, anon. you’re welcome.

other nate (and sid) facts you might not have realised are canon:

nate is a known advocate for therapy. he’s been seeing a sports therapist since 2017

they wear matching clothing all the fucking time, sid has said publicly that he started wearing white sneakers and updated his wardrobe due to nate’s influence (iirc nate might’ve even bought him his first pair of white sneakers? either that or it was a “he told me i need to so i did” situation). they share a tailor. unfortunately i now have to bring your attention to the fact that since they have an alarming amount of matching clothes that they’ve bought for each other, that means that they in fact have to know each other’s clothing sizes off by heart. they also low-key share clothing btw

their families celebrate canada day together and their dads are best friends. in-law behaviour goes crazy

nate did in fact stalk his way into sid’s heart (got the same personal trainer and agent at age 13; built his house next door in 2017; they’ve been spending every day in the summers together since at least 2015. sid cooks for them daily, or at least did pre-pandemic. sid refuses to use nate’s gym tho so they always use sid’s).

nate used to have a fan twitter account more or less where he rooted for the pens. it was active until 2017.

sid and nate regularly go to summer weddings together as each other’s dates. they have done this since, once again, at least 2015

nate has confirmed that he used to have a poster of sid on his wall as a teenager (he didn’t confirm he used to jerk off to it but frankly. i think that’d be saying the quiet part out loud)

when sid won the cup in 2009 and held the parade in cole harbour, nate stood by the side of the road watching it. he was about to turn 14, he was already working with sid’s trainer and agent, and he was about to start attending shattuck (sid’s junior high). due to old pics we also know that this was RIGHT before nate had his first growth spurt and hit puberty. i’m not saying seeing sid with the cup kickstarted nate’s puberty and gave him his first boner but i’m not NOT saying it

nate dated vanessa morgan of riverdale fame in his rookie year. she’s now good friends with elias petersson from the vancouver canucks (this means nothing but i do think it’s a very funny coincidence).

nate schmidt, formerly of the VGK, once failed a drug test (it turned out to be a testing-fuck-up); when nhl players were asked about it natemack iconically said “i don’t think he was sticking a needle up his ass” (i just like this one)

when he was a kid, the one other thing sid wanted to be was a hairdresser. nate, on the other hand, “didn’t have a plan B”

nate is canonically possessive of sid (see: the asg 2024) and sid is canonically delighted by this and into it

they go on so many lunch dates in the summer my dude. they go grocery shopping together. like there’s so many pics of them in grocery stores or out having coffee or weird green shakes

oh i almost forgot, they went on a roadtrip through ireland last year. they’ve been on holiday together multiple times over the years though. done some eurotripping together and stuff. in 2015 they spent three months together, three weeks of which were spent living in sid’s santa monica condo together just the two of them

sid has put up a picture of every stanley cup winning captain in his basement since 2008, when the pens lost in the scf to DET. apparently this serves as motivation for him to win the cup. he notoriously does not watch the playoffs after the pens are out

however, he partied so hard at nate’s cup party he actually closed down the party with his dad. nate is the only non-teammate sid’s ever been seen supporting for a cup run (he’s also never been to his teammates’ cup parties afaik so. there’s that)

also they talked on the phone daily and between periods during nate’s cup run. they also canonically have almost weekly phone dates that can run multiple hours. quote nate “i can’t talk to anyone else the way i can talk to him”

they each have pictures of the two of them together framed in each other’s houses

Okay, so first I have to clear up that those three camps are all different things.

So the Vail camp was originally a private affair organised by Andy O’Brien (with/for Sid, basically as a late-offseason altitude training camp for a week). earliest mention I could find of it is 2012, but I don’t know when Sid and Andy originally started doing it. earliest photo evidence is from summer 2013 from Nate’s nuked insta, courtesy of the original sidnate primer (the one that extensively covers everything up to 2017). They’re a small group here, but already wearing O’Brien-branded jerseys, so I’d wager they’d been doing it for a couple of years already at the time

not sure who the guy on the right is, but otherwise that’s (starting from the left): mike chiasson (known childhood friend of sid’s and longtime employee of the pens) edit: it’s roberto luongo, thanks @fairybreadevangelist for catching that, matt duchene (when he was still on the avs and friends with these guys rip), sid, nate, and the mystery goalie.

in the late 2010s it became kind of a big deal and bigger and more famous, but it’s centered around the Nova Scotian guys, and actually pretty old.

Now, as far as I know it ran until covid hit, at which point the two-year disruption led to the by-then-sizeable Vail crew joining the giant star-studded bio steel roster for 2022 and 2023 (where it was actually in Halifax).

biosteel camp, on the other hand, was a different yearly camp organised by the biosteel sports drink company for four days in toronto for toronto-based players starting in 2010 (hence it being historically attended by the likes of tyler seguin and connor mcdavid). however, biosteel filed for bankruptcy in 2023, and while they still exist in some capacity after being sold multiple times, they have not done the NHL camp in the last two years afaik.

Cwench hydration is a company that was founded in 2024, i suspect to slide into the gap that biosteel left. it was founded in part by Andy and Nate, and Andy is the brains behind it pretty much, and he also developed the drinks.

sid: the known king of superstition; the meticulous, stubborn routine guy. of the opinion that it’s preordained fate all the way down; that luck is something beg for in morsels via offerings of habit and prayer. nate: the man who bends the future through sheer force of will. the human embodiment of tenacity and free will.

what ive gathered is currently happening in a nevada strip club

dude it’s fucking crazy that sid is gonna be his best man just knowing that tyson barrie has been his ride or die bestie for literally OVER A DECADE.