- Elliotte Friedman says the Avalanche told him a Cale Makar extension is getting done
- Term is the open question, and the eight-year ceiling disappears on Sept. 16
- Read below for Makar’s contract math, Joe Sakic’s promise and the new CBA deadline
Cale Makar’s next contract is coming. The only thing left to settle is how many years go on it.
Elliotte Friedman was asked where the Colorado negotiation stands during Friday’s edition of NHL Tonight, and the answer he relayed from the team left almost nothing to interpret.
“The Avalanche said that we are gonna get this done,” Friedman said. “I think one of the big questions about him is going to be term.”
Here’s the quote making the rounds this weekend:
There’s one season left on the six-year, $54 million deal Makar signed in July 2021. The $9 million cap hit on it turned into one of the best values in hockey about ten minutes after he put pen to paper, and he has been eligible to sign an extension since July 1.
Sept. 16 is why term keeps coming up. Teams can still re-sign their own players for eight years through Sept. 15, and once the new CBA kicks in the maximum drops to seven. Unrestricted free agents fall from seven years to six.
None of this is a surprise in Denver. Joe Sakic said back in June that Makar would finish his career with the Avalanche and that talks with his agent were already underway.
The 27-year-old is coming off 79 points (20 goals, 59 assists) and a plus-32 in 75 games, third among NHL defensemen in scoring and third on his own team behind Nathan MacKinnon and Martin Necas. He collected his 500th career point along the way and turned up as a Norris Trophy finalist for the sixth straight year. He has won two of them.
Pinning down the number is the harder part. Macklin Celebrini reset the ceiling at $18.8 million and Kirill Kaprizov pulled $17 million out of Minnesota, which is a rough neighborhood to start from when your client was just slotted first on NHL Network’s list of the league’s best defensemen.
Makar also sits on a 2027 unrestricted free agent class that reads like an All-Star roster, next to Quinn Hughes, Sidney Crosby, Nikita Kucherov, Jason Robertson and Erik Karlsson:
Getting Makar’s name crossed off that list before Sept. 15 is worth a full extra year of control to Colorado. After that date, the longest contract Sakic can offer his best defenseman is seven.
