This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Cale Makar
Colorado Avalanche Defense
Six foot nothing and 187 pounds, 250 assists in 315 games, and the best career plus-minus rate of any defenceman in this edition bar his own partner.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | COL | 57 | 12 | 38 | 50 | +12 | 12 | 4 | 0 | 4 | 121 | 9.9 | 21:01 |
| 2020-21 | COL | 44 | 8 | 36 | 44 | +17 | 12 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 104 | 7.7 | 24:19 |
| 2021-22 | COL | 77 | 28 | 58 | 86 | +48 | 26 | 9 | 0 | 6 | 240 | 11.7 | 25:40 |
| 2022-23 | COL | 60 | 17 | 49 | 66 | +16 | 30 | 5 | 0 | 6 | 176 | 9.7 | 26:23 |
| 2023-24 | COL | 77 | 21 | 69 | 90 | +15 | 16 | 7 | 1 | 1 | 231 | 9.1 | 24:46 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 315 | 86 | 250 | 336 | +108 | 96 | 29 | 1 | 20 | 872 | 9.9 | 24:33 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
Seventy-seven games, 21 goals and 69 assists for 90 points, 7 on the power play and 1 shorthanded, 24:46 a night and plus-15. He took 54.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,337 minutes, the 84th percentile, and his ice went 72-65 against an expectation of 60.46-50.61.
Ninety points from a defenceman is the third-highest total on a club that scored more goals than anybody in hockey, and only two forwards beat him. He is plus-108 in 315 career games — the second-best rate of anybody in this edition with two hundred and fifty games, behind the man he plays beside.
The Finesse Game
He skates better than anybody at his position and it is not an argument. The stride is long, the edges are absurd, and a forechecker who commits to him is beaten before he has finished committing.
He carries the puck out of his own zone and through the neutral zone at a speed no forechecker can match, and the exit is finished before the pressure has arrived. That single ability is worth more than the 90 points, because it means the club almost never has to ice a puck.
He walks the line and holds it, and 250 assists in 315 games is a rate no defenceman of his generation approaches. Two hundred and thirty-one shots at a median of 46 feet with 62 per cent from beyond 40 — the point shot is a genuine weapon and 21 goals is the proof, but the passing is the reason he is the best defenceman in the league.
The Physical Game
He is 6-0 and 187 and he defends with feet and stick rather than with body. Sixteen penalty minutes in 77 games at 24:46 a night is a remarkable rate and it comes from never being out of position long enough to need a penalty.
He does not clear his crease by force and he loses battles below the goal line to heavy forwards. On a pair with Devon Toews and behind a forward group that holds the puck, it has not mattered, and against the clubs that make it matter in May it sometimes has.
The Intangibles
The fourth pick in 2017 out of Calgary, a Hobey Baker at Massachusetts, a Calder, a Norris and a Stanley Cup by 23. He has never had a bad season and he has never played fewer than 21 minutes a night.
He is the argument this book keeps making, in one player: a small defenceman who dominates a heavy league because the puck does not care how much anybody weighs.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.21 penalty minutes a game over 77, 8th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
65% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 100th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“He carries the puck out of his own zone and through the neutral zone at a speed no forechecker can match, and the exit is finished before the pressure has arrived.”
“He walks the line and holds it, and 250 assists in 315 games is a rate no defenceman of his generation approaches.”
“He does not clear his crease by force and he loses battles below the goal line to heavy forwards.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,337 minutes
- Expected goals
- 54.4%
- 84th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52.9%
- 78th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 72 for, 65 against. Expected: 60.5 and 50.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 0 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.
Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 77 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2023-24 · 77 games
- Top speed
- 23.3 mph
- 97th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 2.51 a game
- Distance
- 3.54 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 96.2 mph
- 77th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.
Usual linemates
2023-24 · 1337 minutes at five-on-five
- Devon Toews78%
Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.
Why the numbers land there
Five-on-five, 2023-24
- The club
- COL took 52.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.4% — 2.1 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,337 minutes at five-on-five — 91st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Devon Toews | 55.2% | 52.3% | 54.0% |
| Nathan MacKinnon | 56.9% | 47.6% | 59.9% |
| Mikko Rantanen | 56.7% | 50.0% | 54.2% |
55.2% together, 52.3% for him apart and 54.0% for Toews apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
351 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 21 of them goals. His median goal came from 37 feet. 10% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 62% from beyond forty.