Cale Makar’s season hits historic heights for Avalanche

The Colorado Avalanche responded to their frustrating win against the Chicago Blackhawks last night with a resounding effort tonight against the Columbus Blue Jackets. Circumstances were against the Avs here as their extremely late start last night turned into an even longer night as the game went into a shootout and then the team got stuck in Chicago due to bad weather.

The Avs didn’t get to Columbus until the middle of the day today and then went into the game with the news of not having forwards Jonathan Drouin and Martin Necas available to them tonight. The Avs were also on the second game of a back-to-back while Columbus had the night off last night. Despite all of those things, the Avs rolled into town and smoked Columbus in a 7-3 drubbing.

The win clinched the eighth consecutive playoff berth for the Avalanche. Let’s talk a little bit about a strong team effort but a lot about Cale Makar and his season.

Avalanche get more help from depth players

Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, and Devon Toews all had three-point nights. That’s a great formula for winning games, but tonight’s win was about way more than those guys.

The Avs got goals from Brock Nelson on a depleted second line, three points (1G, 2A) from Charlie Coyle on the third line, and a Parker Kelly goal from the fourth line. Goaltender Mackenzie Blackwood wasn’t at his best in this game so the skaters needed to pick up the slack a bit. That’s how this goes one night after goalie Scott Wedgewood bailed out a lackluster performance from the skaters.

It says a lot about a team that they lose two-thirds of a line in their top six and respond by scoring seven goals, none of which came against an empty net (although the way Columbus netminder Elvis Merzlikins played tonight, it sort of felt like an empty net at times).

Much-maligned (at least in this space) Miles Wood also added a goal and an assist to make the kind of impact I had been begging him to make in his previous turns in the lineup. This was a much better effort from him.

10 skaters had points but five of those had multi-point nights. This was a stat-padding kind of night. MacKinnon’s night put him three points ahead of Nikita Kucherov in the race for the Art Ross Trophy as the league’s top scorer as Kucherov went scoreless in a 2-1 loss in Ottawa tonight. The three points for Toews continue his strong end-of-season push and give him 42 on the season and 29 points in his last 40 games after a slooooow start of just 13 points in 33 games.

Coyle got his first official goal as an Av and added two more assists. His offensive game had been really quiet in his Avs tenure so a little breakthrough was much-needed. The real story on this playoff-clinching night was Makar, however.

Cale Makar should win his 2nd Norris Trophy

Makar is beloved because of the highlight-reel-worthy stuff that he does and reviled by his detractors because they say he’s not good enough defensively (this is true at times) and is a product of an elite offensive engine with the Avalanche. I’ve always thought that a little silly because the Avs are only as good as they are offensively because they have Makar on the ice for just under half of every game.

Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar also runs Makar and MacKinnon out there a majority of the time, which has created a lot of discussion about what Makar’s numbers look like away from MacKinnon. I continue to ask, “Who cares?” Makar plays something like 70% of his 5v5 time with MacKinnon and they dominate together.

These two superstar talents supercharge each other’s abilities and they put up elite offensive results together. MacKinnon’s case for the Hart Trophy isn’t significantly dinged by the presence of Makar, but Makar’s Norris candidacy gets dinged by the presence of MacKinnon. Why?

Makar had a chance tonight to go head-to-head against one of the other Norris contenders this season, Zach Werenski. Werenski has been at the forefront of the wonderful story that has been Columbus’s season. This is a Blue Jackets team that not much was expected from but they have given everything they had to offer. It may not be enough to make the playoffs, but we should all applaud what a special run it has been for a galvanized group.

Werenski’s all-situations play is at the top of the list of success stories for the Blue Jackets this year. He’s been productive offensively with 74 points and wears every hat he can for his team. He’s been exceptional. He’s also from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, which is the location of one of my favorite underrated movies (“Gross Pointe Blank”, you’re welcome for the recommendation if you’ve never seen it), so that’s also cool.

The other candidate is, of course, Quinn Hughes of the Vancouver Canucks. He has similarly been dynamite offensively with 70 points but in just 61 games as injuries have kept him from playing as many games as his competitors. Availability is a skill, of course, and it is the biggest pockmark of the Hughes profile this season.

His defensive impacts have been great and the on/off splits with Hughes show that he is by far their most valuable player. And Vancouver is going to comfortably miss the postseason. So, to what end is that value? We watched Erik Karlsson snag this trophy a few years ago because he put up a 100-point season while playing zero meaningful minutes for a dreadful San Jose Sharks team. He didn’t have to play defense and was free to sell out at every turn to chase offense. He did, and he got some hardware for it.

I at least find the discussion meaningful, though any outright discounting of Hughes simply because the Canucks miss the playoffs would be foolish.

None of the contenders this year fail to play defense. But what Makar has going for him is, like Karlsson, a statistical milestone that should mean a little something to the voters. He’s also been an all-situations player for the Avalanche (even if his PK results have not been good) and has a substantial lead in the scoring race among defenders.

After tonight, Makar is up to 90 points with Werenski his next closest at just 74. Makar’s goal at the end of the second period was his 30th of the season, a golden number for a defenseman in terms of goal-scoring.

Mike Green of the Washington Capitals was the last player to do it in the NHL back in 2008-09 and Makar joined a very small group of players. According to NHL.com, there have been 2,527 defensemen to appear in at least 1 NHL game. Makar became just the ninth of all of them to score 30 goals in a single season. It is just the 18th such season in NHL history.

Makar’s season has been truly special. He has five games to try to get 10 points to track down the century mark, but even if he is unable to accomplish that, this has been the kind of season that should end up rewarded on his mantle with a second Norris Trophy.

In the same way it is not the fault of Werenski or Hughes that their seasons will likely not result in a playoff appearance because the talent surrounding them isn’t quite good enough, it isn’t Makar’s fault that the Avs front office has built a substantially better team around him. He has made the most of it with another special season, however, and has the kind of statistical case that would cause each of the Vancouver and Columbus fan bases to slip into an incandescent rage had their guys had the season Makar has had but didn’t win the trophy.

Those are both great players. For my money, Hughes is the second-best defenseman in the NHL. But number one remains Makar. Tonight should be the rubber stamp on adding some more hardware to his robust trophy case.