Cale Makar doesn't care about expectations

It’s safe to say expectations are high for Cale Makar. It’s also safe to say he doesn’t care all that much about them.

The Avalanche have been lucky enough to see many incredible forwards come through town since 1995 but the high-end defenders have been harder for the organization to find.

There have been brief tenures of guys like Rob Blake and Ray Bourque and obviously, the excellent career of Adam Foote largely took place with the Avalanche. Beyond that, however, the team has struggled to develop its own high-end defenders.

Tyson Barrie and John-Michael Liles have been the best of the bunch and those two players had very good Avalanche careers.

But Makar…Cale Makar is different.

His impressive college career gave way to the rarified air of playoff production before ever playing a regular season NHL game. Six points in 10 games is a 49-point pace across 82 games.

If he replicated that scoring in his rookie year, it would be the highest rookie total for a defenseman since 2009.

Makar should get a plum opportunity to do so, however, because Colorado’s blue line is now missing the 59 points produced last season by Barrie. Makar isn’t getting ahead of himself with the idea he’s here to “replace” Barrie.

“I’ll be ready if it happens,” Makar said of  Whatever the coaches want me to do, I’ll try to do to the best of my abilities. That’s basically where my mind’s at.”

Makar’s comfort with the cliches aside, he does seem to be taking this new challenge ahead of him with an appropriate amount of caution. He could have been overconfident after the playoff performance he put up but instead is trying to make life next to Sam Girard a little easier for them both.

“We both move well, we’re able to transition really quickly,” Makar said of his preseason partner. “If we start tightening up the defensive zone systems, I’m still getting used to them, once I fully understand what I’m doing, it’s going to make it a lot easier to read off each other.”

While Makar and Girard didn’t exclusively play together in today’s 3-2 overtime win against the Minnesota Wild, they still saw certain situations together that will likely become regular roles for them during the upcoming season.

Whether the Avs keep Girard and Makar, or ‘Turn and Burn’ together is anyone’s guess right now. For his part, Makar is just itching to get into some real games.

“We have so much depth on D on this team that anybody can play with anybody,” he said. “Who knows if they’ll keep us together or not. If they do, we’ll be happy but if they don’t, we’ll be happy as well. I can play with anybody on this team.”

Where Makar figures to have an immediate impact regardless of D partner is on the power play, where Barrie produced 25 of his 59 points last year. On a unit with Nathan MacKinnon, Gabe Landeskog, and eventually (maybe?) Mikko Rantanen, the pressure will be on Makar to keep a pretty well-oiled machine running.

To the surprise of no one, Makar feels he is up to the task.

“It’s one of my strengths,” he said of his power play acumen. “Whatever unit it’s on doesn’t really matter but I think playing power play and creating offense has always been one of my strengths. Just to add to that, regardless if you’re on the first or second unit, everyone can make plays. I’m fortunate to be on either.”

Makar got to put his skills to the test today, especially in overtime as the Avalanche maintained possession and Makar was out there for all but 12 seconds of Colorado’s man advantage.

While they didn’t score, he showed off what he feels are his strengths in that role.

“Just have patience with the puck,” Makar began. “You want to get the puck to the net as quick as you can and it’s going to be an adjustment period in this league just getting pucks through. Everybody’s going to crash the net really quick so being able to get pucks to the net. I learned that in the playoffs. It’s just going to be something to build off of. Having the ability to be agile on the blue line is one of my strengths.”

Colorado needs Makar to be special, possibly even historic. He may reach those heights in his rookie year, he may not. One thing is for sure, though. He won’t care about the noise either way.

GAME TAKEAWAYS

• Makar, Girard, and Bowen Byram are the future of this Colorado defense and seeing them all in the same game was pretty exciting. Add Conor Timmins in there and it’s not hard to see why the Avalanche are believed to have the top young defense corps in the NHL.
• Nazem Kadri is really good. He’s exactly what Colorado needed. I think we saw the limitations tonight and why he’s not a top-flight center but drop Nathan MacKinnon in front of him and the Avalanche will have one of the best 1-2 center duos.
• Shane Bowers was really good again and nearly ended the game in overtime when he took a pass from Girard and cut hard towards the net. A great poke check from Alex Stalock kept him from finishing it off.
• Bowers received postgame praise from Jared Bednar that might be as effusive of praise as I’ve heard him give a young player before. “Excellent. Bigger, stronger, faster than he was last year. He’s a good player, a really good player. I really like what I’ve seen of him so far. He handles himself really well in a bunch of different situations.”
• Because Bowers is a center, I still think it’s a tough road to making the NHL quickly but if they decide to move Pierre-Edouard Bellemare to left wing, they could open a spot for a Bellemare-Bowers-Calvert fourth line.
• Speaking of centers, Tyson Jost played his second preseason game in the middle of the ice and again looked dynamic and like an impact player. The plan coming into camp was for Jost to play wing somewhere in the top six and J.T. Compher as the third-line center but after four preseason games, I think they should revisit that plan.
• That is, of course, assuming Jost is healthy. He took a slap shot off his hand in the third period and briefly left the bench to tend to it. The x-ray room was opened up following the game and it’s easy to connect the dots that it was Jost who got them on his hand. We’ll know more Tuesday when the team is next on the ice.
• Following the game, Nick Henry was sent to the Colorado Eagles and Colin Campbell was released from his PTO. Eagles camp opens on Tuesday so there might be more cuts coming in the next 48 hours.