Colorado Avalanche: Top 3 takeaways from Cale Makar’s rookie season

3. Makar Has The Tools To Be A Franchise Defenseman

There are very few franchise defensemen in the NHL. Victor Hedman, John Carlson, Roman Josi, and Brent Burns are just a few. While Makar isn’t quite in that tier yet, he’s remarkably close to it after his rookie season.

Makar will need to keep improving and keep doing what he has been doing in order to get into that tier. You don’t become a franchise defenseman in one season. Rather, you become one by consistently being your team’s top defenseman. You could certainly make a strong case Makar has been Colorado’s best defenseman this season.

His production obviously gets most of the attention, and rightfully so. But Makar’s underlying stats are also impressive. He leads the Avalanche in the following stats. All stats are courtesy of Natural Stat Trick.

• Relative 5v5 CorsiFor % (+1.57%)
• Relative 5v5 expected goals for percentage (+4.14%)

Makar also ranked in the top three in most other categories. While his relative numbers weren’t elite, they were still great and it’s worth noting the Avalanche are eighth in the NHL in CF%. It’s hard to make a huge relative impact when your team is already a top 10 shot attempts team. If you want to know why I’d give Hughes my first place Calder vote over Makar, it’s largely because Hughes has more impressive underlying stats while still maintaining an impressive level of production.

No matter what metric you look at, it’s difficult to not come away impressed with how well Makar did in his rookie season. He played with the maturity of a veteran and he’s only 21 years old. The sky is the limit with Makar.

His next step will be an extremely difficult one. He’s already proven he’s a great defenseman. But can he be an elite defenseman? If I were a betting man (and I am not one), I’d wager the answer to that question is “yes”. But only time will tell.