This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Cale Makar
Colorado Avalanche Defense
30 goals and 92 points from the blue line, a Norris, and the best skater at his position in the world.
| 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 | COL | 80 | 30 | 62 | 92 | +28 | 14 | 12 | 2 | 4 | 246 | 12.2 | 25:43 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 395 | 116 | 312 | 428 | +136 | 110 | 41 | 3 | 24 | 1118 | 10.4 | 24:47 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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
30 goals and 62 assists in 80 games for 92 points, plus-28, on 25:43 a night — the first 30-goal season by a defenceman in 16 years, and a Norris to go with it.
57.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 96th percentile. 246 shots from a median of 42 feet, so more than half of them from beyond 40: he shoots from the line because the line is where the puck-carrying ends, and enough of them go in that killers cannot ignore it.
The Finesse Game
The skating is the whole player and it is the best in the league at his position. He is not fast in a straight line so much as instantly at top speed, with edges that let him change direction without losing any of it, and forecheckers do not pin him because they cannot get close enough to.
The decision at the end of the rush is what separates him from the other elite skating defencemen. He does not carry into trouble; he carries until a lane appears and then either shoots — the release is quicker and heavier than it looks — or slides it to a man arriving late. Defensively he ends more plays with his feet than his stick, closing gaps so tightly that attackers run out of room at the blue line.
The Physical Game
6 feet and 187, which is average, and he is not a physical defenceman. He will not clear a crease by force and does not try to. What he has instead of size is the ability to remove the situation entirely — he retrieves pucks before pressure arrives because he gets there first.
He is not undersized. He is ordinary-sized and built entirely out of skating, which is a different thing and a more durable one.
The Intangibles
A Cup, a Conn Smythe and now two Norris trophies, and no character conversation at all attached to any of it.
The one real worry is availability. He has not played a full 82 in some years, and a defence organised around 1 man feels every game he misses — 80 last season was among his best. Colorado’s structure assumes he is on the ice for 26 minutes, and there is no second version of him on the roster.
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.
- slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
18.8% of his attempts in the slot, 93rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
- hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
16 of 216 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 7.4%, 100th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.17 penalty minutes a game over 80, 6th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
- durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
- drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
57.5% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 50.1% for his club in the minutes he sat: +7.4, 97th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
62% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 94th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“He does not carry into trouble; he carries until a lane appears and then either shoots — the release is quicker and heavier than it looks — or slides it to a man arriving late.”
“closing gaps so tightly that attackers run out of room at the blue line”
“He will not clear a crease by force and does not try to.”
“6 feet and 187, which is average, and he is not a physical defenceman.”
“with edges that let him change direction without losing any of it, and forecheckers do not pin him because they cannot get close enough to”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,444 minutes
- Expected goals
- 57.5%
- 97th pct
- Shot attempts
- 56.1%
- 93rd 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, 49 against. Expected: 73.3 and 54.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 2 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 86 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, 2024-25 · 80 games
- Top speed
- 23.6 mph
- 98th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 2.58 a game
- Distance
- 3.80 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 98.4 mph
- 93rd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 89.7
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
2024-25 · 1444 minutes at five-on-five
- Devon Toews75%
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, 2024-25
- The club
- COL took 53.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 57.5% — 4.3 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,444 minutes at five-on-five — 97th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Devon Toews | 56.9% | 59.2% | 52.1% |
| Nathan MacKinnon | 62.5% | 45.8% | 51.3% |
| Artturi Lehkonen | 62.8% | 53.0% | 48.2% |
56.9% together, 59.2% for him apart and 52.1% for Toews apart. Toews was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Toews than for him.
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
389 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 30 of them goals. His median goal came from 41 feet. 13% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 56% from beyond forty.