Cale Makar's next season debut may already be in serious jeopardy
Cale Makar's offseason just got heavier. Elliotte Friedman called the Avalanche star's injury "pretty significant" on Wednesday.
The quote, relayed on the FAN Hockey Show and surfaced by insider Taj on X just hours later, landed barely a day after Colorado's second-round exit at the hands of Vegas.
Friedman didn't soften it. He flat out said some people are wondering if the defenseman will even be ready for the start of next season.
That's a brutal sentence for anyone in Denver to wake up to. The Avs just finished 55-16-11 with 121 points and the league's top seed in their pocket.
The Norris-caliber blue liner posted 20 goals and 59 assists in 75 games at plus-32. He was the offensive engine, the power-play quarterback, the matchup answer.
Then the playoffs turned cold. He produced 5 points across 11 games, including a game-winner, but the final stretch went pointless with a -1 rating.
Vegas knew where the puck was going. The Golden Knights took the series 4-0, finishing it Tuesday night in their own building.
Bednar and MacFarland face an offseason with no easy answer
Jared Bednar now builds a summer around a player carrying a $9 million cap hit and no real replacement anywhere on the depth chart.
How do you draw up next year's first power-play unit when the conductor's status is a mystery? You don't. You wait, and you hope.
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Chris MacFarland's offseason board changes shape too. Every trade pitch, every UFA call, every cap dollar now runs through one question.
When does number 8 skate again?
Friedman's tone mattered as much as the words. The veteran insider relayed what he's been told by people close to the situation, not idle speculation from a studio chair.
If the timeline bleeds into October or beyond, Colorado opens 2026-27 without the man who delivered 4 power-play goals and 25 power-play assists this regular year.
The franchise went 26-9-6 at home. They piled up 302 goals against just 203 surrendered. They still got knocked out in round two.
Now the cornerstone they leaned on every shift might miss the start of training camp entirely. Maybe longer.
The next real update won't come from a press release. It'll come from whichever insider Bednar's people decide to brief first.
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YESTERDAY
MAY 26, 2026
| ||||
| G | A | PTS | ||
| Gabriel Landeskog | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Cole Smith | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Mark Stone | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Dylan Coghlan | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Nic Dowd | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Nazem Kadri | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Brayden McNabb | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Martin Necas | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Shea Theodore | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Rasmus Andersson | - | - | - | |
| Ivan Barbashev | - | - | - | |
| Mackenzie Blackwood | - | - | - | |
| Brent Burns | - | - | - | |
| Ross Colton | - | - | - | |
| Pavel Dorofeyev | - | - | - | |
| Jack Drury | - | - | - | |
| Jack Eichel | - | - | - | |
| Noah Hanifin | - | - | - | |
| Carter Hart | - | - | - | |
| Tomas Hertl | - | - | - | |
| COMPLETE STATS | ||||