In Nashville after being nominated for his third Norris Trophy in just four (full) seasons of hockey, Cale Makar sat down with us to give some perspective on a range of topics including Erik Johnson’s time in Colorado, the newest addition of Ryan Johansen, and Colorado’s building excitement to remain contenders.
How much different has this off season been for you versus last year?
It feels so weird already. I feel like we’ve been off forever. To be honest with you, it’s nice to have that little break. It’s almost a blessing in disguise for this year. Obviously you never want to lose – we wanted to win it again this year. To have a little bit of extra time helped guys a lot for sure.
How much did the mental grind get to you guys where it’s like, “We’ve got to come up for air at some point in the year.”?
We were just getting hit with punches left and right the whole year with injuries and never having our full team. That’s not an excuse or anything, but it’s definitely such a mental grind on guys – especially a guy like Mikko Rantanen who plays all 82 games and he’s playing with a different line every single night, so you never have that consistency.
When you don’t find that, it kind of sputters out of the gate a little bit. We wanted more success, but at the end of the day, you can’t look at it like that anymore. We have to use this to our advantage. We want to be competitive for 5-10 years, so we got to make sure we utilize this time now
Is that a little bit more fuel going into next year?
Yeah, I think so. The way that I look at it, we got another big piece in Ryan Johansen here. Hopefully that will help the group a lot, and we still need more pieces to get to that level. This [upcoming] year, I think a lot of guys are really excited. We’re going to do everything we can to get to that next level again.
(On Ryan Johansen) What’s something that you can say about him, the way he plays, that the average person can’t tell or doesn’t know just from watching him?
He’s got that edge to his game. He’s chippy and he’ll hit you in those weird areas a little bit. Every team kind of wants a guy like that to a certain extent. And I think for us, the one thing I noticed too is he’s really good with faceoffs, so he can snap them back pretty well.
Those guys are always invaluable to everybody. I’m excited to see how he fits on the team because I think he can kind of go all around our line up. I’m excited to see where we place him. Excited to meet him.
This is your third straight year being up for this award. I know you don’t typically like to talk about it much, but have you stopped at any point and thought about the fact that three years in a row, you’re up for top defenseman in the NHL?
I haven’t really thought about it like that, to be honest. I still feel like I haven’t got to that (place) where I feel comfortable actually being up for these individual awards yet. This year, I don’t know if it’s my place at the moment, but I’m just super honored to be here. Any time you get to represent your team on any level, it’s amazing. That’s how I look at it.
(On Erik Johnson hitting free agency) What has he meant to you especially in the early stages of your career helping you to get acclimated to the league?
He’s been there my whole career. It’s obviously an unfortunate one – that’s just some of the bad side of the business. People have to make tough decisions if teams want to get a little bit better in certain areas. I love EJ so much. He’s one of my best friends on the team and, (I’m) really going to miss him – his character and his competitiveness especially.
Then you look at just how light hearted he is off the ice and the communicator that he is in the room too. He’s definitely a big personality that you’re losing. You can’t look at another guy to just fill that role because he’s such a good guy.
Denver Nuggets won the NBA championship. How cool is it to see you guys win it last year and then to see them win this year?
I don’t think I’ve ever been more motivated to win another one.
Honestly, after watching that, I was so excited. I watched all the finals just to see them win. It sounds like they have a really good group of guys too. That doesn’t always come along. So to have a guy like Jokic, Murray, and Gordon, it’s crazy to see. It was so cool watching that. And then being able to watch the parade, we had guys texting each other. (It got us) motivated. It definitely gets the juices going, that’s for sure.
Seeing the hype and everybody (at the parade) (and how) hyped everybody got after they won it makes you want to do it again. You want to relive that moment again. The guys are excited for the grind.
