Survival of the Fittest: on Cale Makar

The best defenseman since Bobby Orr doesn’t skate like anyone else. Cale Makar will win a foot race, pivot on a wire’s edge and then accelerate out of his turn to swerve across the blue line and find a teammate’s stick through a cluster of bodies. He is the most talented and composed defenseman that anyone reading this article has probably seen in their lifetime. ‘Probably’ only hedges for those old enough to have seen the 1976 Canada Cup. 

Makar, who missed the only game Canada lost in the Four Nations Face-Off, was one pillar of this country’s greatest advantage – that, for at least the next few years, Canada will have the three best players in any game it appears in. The other two are forwards Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon (perhaps just outside of this inner sanctum is Sidney Crosby, still impactful at 37 and one of the best leaders in sports history). But equally valuable is the Colorado Avalanche defenseman, who plays half the game at a higher level than any of the opponents it’s his job to erase. Without Makar, Canada was hamstrung against the Americans last Saturday: ineffective in its transitional play, nowhere near as confident defensively and less threatening in the offensive zone, where Makar's individual brilliance creates opportunities that even his world-level peers can’t conceive of. 

In his sixth NHL season, Makar has 399 points in 372 regular season games. At UMass-Amherst he won the Hobey Baker award as the NCAA’s top hockey player. In the NHL, Makar earned the Calder Trophy as its top rookie, a Conn Smythe for playoff MVP in 2022, and that same year, a Norris as the league’s top defenseman. His playoff production has been outstanding, with 80 points in 72 games. 

Makar’s NHL rise has occurred in an unfriendly timezone for those of us east of the Rocky Mountains. To watch him is to see a new type of player who looks qualitatively different. One of the NHL’s fastest skaters, he is the rare athlete so fluid that it often doesn’t seem like his body is ever working that hard, even at top speed. Much has been made of his edge work, of how – according to Colorado teammate Nathan MacKinnon, who said Makar will be the best defenseman ever – he’s used this advantage to reinvent the position. But his exceptional skating is just one piece of a larger whole. 

In the 2024 NHL All-Star Skills competition, Makar had the hardest shot. He has excellent hands, and showed them off in Thursday’s final, bloodlessly toe-dragging around his American checkers at the blueline, handling the puck as though playing at his own, easy pace against the world’s best players. His stamina is unmatched: one of the hallmarks of Makar’s game is the sheer amount of it he provides. On Thursday night he played over twenty-eight minutes, factoring into the overtime goal when he rimmed the puck to Mitch Marner, who found Connor McDavid – shockingly alone in the slot – for a goal that salvaged Canada’s hockey identity. 

This composite represents the sport's evolution. Since Sidney Crosby’s appearance in 2005, with his penchant for turning his skates into a U to avoid checkers along the offensive boards, the game’s best players – those at the very top of the sport, who sustain the same statistical excellence over a career – have been more fully rounded than in past eras. Skating is the most obvious difference. When hockey evolved out of its barroom physicality and players were no longer allowed to main opponents on their way to the net, speed took on greater import. 

The new breed of best player can do everything. Crosby married one of the deepest, most balanced strides in history with Gretzky-like vision and Rudy Ruettiger’s will. MacKinnon has brought pitiless, freight-train speed and power, phone booth hands and a competitive lust. McDavid, the game's all-time flashiest skater, has the sort of skill set assembled by a greedy nerd playing god with a video game’s create-a-player function.  

In Makar, the defensive position has its own ludicrously balanced superstar. Some players come along who do everything better than everyone else. The hockey writer Red Fischer said this about Bobby Orr, whom he considered the greatest ever. Without Orr’s closest approximation, Thursday’s final may have turned tragic.