Avalanche Film Room: Bowen Byram is already showcasing his prodigious talent

The entire Cale Makar experience was legitimately one of the more thrilling things I’ve had the pleasure of covering in my short career covering the Colorado Avalanche.

From the draft to his UMass career, which started off with a “meh” freshman season, to leading the Minutemen to the national championship and playing in Game 3 of Colorado’s first-round series 48 hours after his college career was finished, it was remarkable watching a young man with nearly an unlimited ceiling continue to justify the hype surrounding him.

Makar’s rookie year culminated in a Calder Trophy win after scoring 50 points in just 57 games played. It was such a special rookie year, Makar managed to snag a couple of down-ballot Norris votes, an award notorious for having to “earn it” over a long period of time.

As Makar’s remarkable story was playing out, the Avs used another fourth overall pick on another defenseman. Bowen Byram was cut from a similar cloth as Makar in that they were both smooth-skating offensive catalysts and seen as future stars in an NHL that increasingly values their skill sets over the big-bodied board bangers of yesterday.

After watching Makar smash through expectations and put an unlimited ceiling on his NHL potential, I’ve been trying to caution people since the moment Byram was selected –  it is not this “easy” very often. Defensemen drafted in the top five of the NHL Draft since 2010 have a very spotty record of success and the closest any of them have come to winning the Norris was a fourth-place finish by Seth Jones in 2017-18.

The point I’m making here is that even the highest caliber of D prospects have produced a wide array of results in the NHL. Part of what made Makar so special was how seamlessly he’s ascended the ranks.

There’s no way it could happen twice for the Avs two years apart.

Right?

As of this writing, Byram has four NHL games played so drawing a straight line from an impressive opening week in the NHL to stardom is certainly still a projection. A projection, however, that is a little easier to make after seeing him against real NHL players for the first time.

It’s Byram’s second game I want to focus on here. In it, we saw the kind of ‘ceiling’ we expect from him. This is the best of what Byram has to offer on a night where he was absolutely feeling it. That we saw it in the second game of his career?

Good luck not getting too excited about his future.

Poise with the puck

One thing is true about every single NHL rookie: they all panic while adjusting to NHL speed. The real question is how quickly does a player adjust (some never do) and what happens when that player is comfortable at the speed?

On this night, Byram adjusted awfully quickly. Here are two premium examples of the kind of cool head he plays with.

Obviously, there’s a conversation about Byram selling out and leaving Silfverberg alone on the backdoor like that. It’s an easily cleaned up miscue. What I love here is how calm he is pulling the puck out of the crease.

The vast majority of times you see a player in this situation, he’s swatting at the puck or desperately trying to poke it away from the crease. Byram casually collects the puck like he’s checking the mail and pulls it behind his net. When pressured, he calmly reverses the puck to his partner and the Avs exit the zone cleanly.

From disaster to a clean zone exit in about eight seconds.

I know both Evan and Rudo made mentions of this play after the game so you’ve probably already seen it a few times elsewhere but I wanted to add it in as well.

Byram grabs a bouncing puck, corrals it, scans the ice, and he sees the two Ducks players converging on him. He knows MacKinnon is coming off the wall, he just needs to draw the two Anaheim players into him. What Byram knows that we don’t here is where everyone else is on the ice.

Byram can see he has all the room to make the play to MacKinnon and he just waits the Ducks forecheckers out. This…was not the last time Byram was going to win a battle against Ryan Getzlaf but it is a great example of Byram’s poise with the puck.

Toughness

If there’s one thing every single fan base thinks their team needs at all times, it’s that little extra toughness.

I remember going to a family friend’s ranch in Wyoming one summer for a little getaway. We had a conversation about trucks versus sports cars and their consensus was the sports car wasn’t any good because the truck had plowed through it. That’s basically the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Ferraris fold.

Byram’s skill set is that of a Ferrari. Naturally, there are questions about how he’s going to handle the physicality of the NHL, right? Derek Grant of the Ducks sure had this question and decided to put the rookie to the test.

Congrats, tough guy, you beat up a teenager.

Now that we know Grant is the ultimate Cool Guy, we can focus back on Byram. This is purely a veteran with a specific job trying a kid on for size. Physically, Byram doesn’t do much here.

What I found notable is the clock. Two minutes to go in the second period, eh? That’s when Grant decided to push the kid. Keep that in mind when we see some of the clips below.

Hockey smarts

Before we get to the crazy stuff, this was something that jumped out to me when I was going back through all of his shifts from the game.

The first 20 seconds of the shift aren’t on this video and they’re pretty ho-hum. What I really liked started right when this clip gets going.

You can’t even really see Byram when this gets going. The big thing here is the clock. The game is in the final moments of the first period where every second matters when trying to get to the end of the period.

When Rakell clears the puck, he throws it out to Getzlaf, who tries to corral the puck and start an odd-man rush. The puck gets away from Getzlaf a little bit but Byram knows every second he can delay, the better chance of stopping any attempt at some last-second heroics.

Byram aggressively steps into Getzlaf with his stick. While he doesn’t physically overpower Getzlaf (not many have in that storied career), he keeps Getzlaf from turning up the ice where multiple Ducks have started streaking up the ice to try to create something at the very end. Byram delays long enough that Getzlaf actually drops the puck off and has to turn back.

He’s the most talented guy on the ice for the Ducks and because of Byram’s pressure, he had to completely remove himself from the situation. After forcing the puck back, Byram drops back into his defensive role and the Ducks only managed to flip the puck into Colorado’s end without any real pressure.

This entire sequence stems from Byram refusing to concede any ground to Getzlaf in the neutral zone, something more limited players would have been forced to do because they don’t have the physical gifts (see: skating ability) that Byram does.

It’s a golden example of how Byram’s natural aggressiveness, situational smarts and raw talent combine to create a successful sequence. It may not look like much but the most effective defense is the one that keeps the other team from ever attacking in the first place.

Sir Shakes

This is the good stuff. After going head-to-head multiple times against Getzlaf throughout the game and after Grant tried to intimidate a teenager by taking his ice cream, Byram shrugged all of that off to do this.

Are you for real with this?

Most defensemen in the NHL would rim this puck around the boards or chip it into space and let a forward try to make something happen.

Instead of any of that, Byram head fakes Getzlaf so badly you can hear his old-man ankles begin to snap as Byram peaces out and leaves him in the dust.

When Getzlaf tries to recover, Byram completely ignores him as he dismisses the weak stick checks and cuts hard to the net. The backhand attempt is stopped by John Gibson with a great glove save.

This is pretty easy to breakdown. There are maybe 30 NHL defenders who would and could make that move. Three happen to be on the Avs.

Point #1

The moment every player works toward their entire lives. Getting to the NHL is already incredibly difficult. Once there, you want to get on the board to make it count. Byram sure did that.

This all starts with Rantanen, honestly. What a great job just outskating everyone to the puck to create this sequence. He does a great job delaying and getting the puck to Byram on his tape as he’s still moving forward with significant momentum.

MacKinnon gets out of the way and Byram does the rest.

Byram makes the same basic move that he used to give Getzlaf ankle earthquakes but instead of cutting hard to the net this time, he fires a puck between the legs of a Ducks player and through the home plate area and Rantanen bangs it home for the go-ahead goal.

Great read, great pass.

Coming from a kid in the third period of a tie game in his second career game? That’s the good stuff.

While I won’t post it here, it was absolutely notable that Byram’s last shift in regulation came in the final 90 seconds while the game was still tied 2-2. To get that level of trust from a head coach of a high-level team in just his second game?

It could be the start of something special for Byram.