How concerning is Cale Makar’s injury for the Avalanche?
The Colorado Avalanche will be without star defenseman Cale Makar for Game 1 of the Western Conference Final against the Vegas Golden Knights.
Makar skated ahead of the team’s morning skate, and shortly after, head coach Jared Bednar ruled the perennial Norris Trophy contender out for the game, even after a lengthy break for the Avs between series.
Now, a heavily-favored Colorado team will have a major obstacle to overcome to start the series off on the right foot against a Vegas team that is clicking at the right time.
On Wednesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed where Colorado’s level of concern should be as they start the conference final without their top defenseman.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Some potential news for the Colorado Avalanche today, Cale Makar, who of course left their final game with that upper-body injury, he was on the ice today for the Avs. And just moments ago, quite literally seconds ago, Hutts, Cale Makar out for game one for the Colorado Avalanche. Big, big injury news, and that definitely shifts how you view this series.
Carter Hutton: Big time. This is something that, you know, we’re gonna highlight here. My point on this team is like their depth scoring and what they get is, is when we look at the numbers here of what Colorado can produce, Nathan McKinnon and Cale Makar are the two-headed beast that are the Colorado Avalanche. So now you take Makar out of the factor and you have Jack Eichel, who has really established his defensive game and how good he is. His number one job now is gonna be that matchup against Nathan McKinnon, and that makes his world a heck of a lot easier in this lineup. So this is a big time story. And again, we saw him banged up in that last game against Minnesota, you know, especially when they tied it late. He wasn’t on, Brett Burns was the defenseman on the ice. This is a big time story.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Well, here’s why this is really concerning for me. If I’m an Avs fan… they’ve had like over a week off… and Cale Makar still isn’t ready for tonight. Like if this was something that he was capable of playing through, and it was just a tiny little nick or whatever it was, and we think it’s an upper-body based on how he skated off the ice. If this was a small little thing and one of those injuries that guys just, you know, maybe need to get a shot, take a little something and play through, over a week off should have been enough for him to be ready to go. Like the fact he’s not ready to go, I think this is not just a little like, ah, rest him for Game 1 and he’s ready for Game 2. Like, they’re on home ice. They control the matchups. They could have controlled his minutes. They’ve had a week to work on different like pain tolerance things or a brace or anything like that. Like the fact he’s not playing tonight, major, major red flag.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…