This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Devon Toews
Colorado Avalanche Defense
The quiet half of the best pairing in hockey, and the reason the loud half can do what he does.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | NYI | 48 | 5 | 13 | 18 | +7 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 81 | 6.2 | 17:54 |
| 2019-20 | NYI | 68 | 6 | 22 | 28 | +1 | 16 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 122 | 4.9 | 20:31 |
| 2020-21 | COL | 53 | 9 | 22 | 31 | +29 | 16 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 121 | 7.4 | 24:46 |
| 2021-22 | COL | 66 | 13 | 44 | 57 | +52 | 20 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 158 | 8.2 | 25:22 |
| 2022-23 | COL | 80 | 7 | 43 | 50 | +39 | 26 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 165 | 4.2 | 25:06 |
| 2023-24 | COL | 82 | 12 | 38 | 50 | +28 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 159 | 7.5 | 23:26 |
| 2024-25 | COL | 76 | 10 | 34 | 44 | +30 | 26 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 138 | 7.2 | 24:35 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 473 | 62 | 216 | 278 | +186 | 126 | 8 | 0 | 14 | 944 | 6.6 | 23:20 |
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
10 goals and 34 assists in 76 games for 44 points, plus-30, on 24:35 a night — the second-heaviest workload on the club and the highest plus-minus among its defencemen.
55.6 per cent at five-on-five, the 92nd percentile, over 1,505 minutes, which is more five-on-five hockey than anybody else on the roster played. His on-ice goals came in at 68-51 against an expected 69-55, so the run of play was considerably better than the scoreboard said.
The Finesse Game
The first pass is the skill, and it is quick and almost always right. He beats a forecheck by himself, which is the specific thing that lets Colorado start its offence before the other club is set, and it is why the pairing works: somebody has to be the man who does not carry.
He defends the rush by taking away time rather than space — closing early, angling to the wall, arriving as the puck does. 138 shots from a median of 53 feet is a man keeping pucks alive at the line rather than looking for his own offence, and 34 assists is what that produces.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 191, and stronger on the wall than the frame suggests. He does not get overpowered in the corners and does not go looking for contact either. 26 penalty minutes across a full season is a defenceman who ends plays with position.
The durability is real — 76 games, and he has been a 70-plus man every year since arriving.
The Intangibles
The most underrated defenceman in the league, which is a thing said about a lot of players and true about this one: he plays the hardest minutes on a club whose blue line is discussed entirely in terms of somebody else.
At 31 there is no obvious decline in any of it. The risk is structural rather than personal — he is the safety net under an attacking partner, and a club that ever has to split them will find out how much of Makar’s freedom was his.
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
16.7% of his attempts in the slot, 91st percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
- workhorse· carries the load at even strength
19:48 a game at five-on-five, 99th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
59% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 90th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“The first pass is the skill, and it is quick and almost always right.”
“He beats a forecheck by himself, which is the specific thing that lets Colorado start its offence before the other club is set”
“He defends the rush by taking away time rather than space — closing early, angling to the wall, arriving as the puck does.”
“6-1 and 191, and stronger on the wall than the frame suggests. He does not get overpowered in the corners and does not go looking for contact either.”
“26 penalty minutes across a full season is a defenceman who ends plays with position.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,505 minutes
- Expected goals
- 55.6%
- 92nd 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: 68 for, 51 against. Expected: 69.0 and 55.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 1 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 — 81 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 · 76 games
- Top speed
- 22.6 mph
- 85th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.50 a game
- Distance
- 3.45 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 94.2 mph
- 74th 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 · 1505 minutes at five-on-five
- Cale Makar72%
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 55.6% — 2.4 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,505 minutes at five-on-five — 99th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cale Makar | 56.9% | 52.1% | 59.2% |
| Nathan MacKinnon | 60.1% | 48.3% | 57.4% |
| Artturi Lehkonen | 61.1% | 50.9% | 51.1% |
56.9% together, 52.1% for him apart and 59.2% for Makar apart. He was worse away from Makar, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Makar did.
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
210 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 45 feet. 11% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 67% from beyond forty.