Friday Four: How Stars have managed to contain Cale Makar
The Friday Four is a collection of thoughts and information on some intriguing player storylines from around the NHL.
The Friday Four is a collection of thoughts and information on some intriguing player storylines from around the NHL. On deck this week is:
• Containing Makar key for Stars
• Jones proving to be a very valuable piece for Panthers
• Fowler doing all he can to help Blues upset Jets
• Beauvillier stepping up for Caps
Cale Makar, Colorado Avalanche
You can’t stop Cale Makar, you can only hope to contain him.
The Dallas Stars have actually done a pretty good job overall on Makar in this series, despite the Colorado Avalanche defender having his best outing in Game 6. Makar had a goal and two assists to go along with six shots, though his tally came into an empty net when the game was out of reach. Now the Stars and Avs will play in a Game 7 Saturday night, where the key to victory for Dallas could very well hinge on their ability to rein Makar back in.
Makar is one of the elite players in the league, arguably a top-five player in the world, and was nominated for the Ted Lindsay Award by his peers this week as well as the Norris Trophy. There are a lot of talented defencemen in the NHL, but Makar may be in a class all his own. He scored 30 goals this season, the first time a blue-liner has hit the mark since 2008-09 and only the second time in the last 30 years. Makar has also tallied 90 points for two straight seasons, and you’d have to think he’s a real threat to hit 100 one day.
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In the series against the Stars, though, Makar hadn’t been anywhere close to the typical force he usually is through the first five games. Prior to Thursday, he had no goals, no even-strength points, no points in Games 3, 4 and 5 and was a minus-3 for the series.
He’s averaged nearly 27 minutes per game against Dallas, around a minute and a half more than he skated in the regular season, but the Stars have still been able to slow Makar down for significant stretches. The Stars were keeping him off the scoresheet by getting into shooting lanes and preventing him from getting pucks on net. Makar led all skaters in shot attempts per game this post-season with 9.8 heading into Game 6, but less than half of those ended up on goal. The Avs defenceman had missed the net 10 times in the series and had 19 of his shots blocked, the most by any player in the post-season.
The Stars have also done a good job of making Makar’s minutes difficult. In addition to taking the body when dumping the puck into Makar’s corner and every other chance they get, Dallas has played a lot with the man advantage. Only four teams have spent more time on the penalty kill than the Avalanche in these playoffs and heading into Game 6, Makar was averaging nearly a minute more of shorthanded ice time per night than he did in the regular season. All this makes Makar’s minutes more taxing and helps reduce the energy he has to excel at the offensive end of the ice.
Things got away from the Stars on Thursday, though. Makar set up a pair of goals, including a beautiful pass to set up Martin Necas for his first tally of the series. He also did a better job of getting pucks through traffic with six shots on net, a total he hadn’t hit since Game 2.
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Colorado needs Makar to be at his best now more than ever. You could argue the Avalanche are a deeper team following the Mikko Rantanen trade and subsequent roster additions, but they definitely don’t have as much high-end talent. They are still top-heavy and lean on MacKinnon and Makar a lot for offensive production, so if one of them is struggling, Colorado is going to have a tough time winning with regularity.
This opening-round series was one of the most highly anticipated leading up to the playoffs, especially when it was clear Rantanen was going to square off against his former team. That said, by the time it began, Dallas had limped into the playoffs, losing seven straight games and without Miro Heiskanen and Jason Robertson due to injury. That gave a huge advantage to the Avs, but the Stars have slowed down Makar enough to really neutralize any edge Colorado may have had, and now it’s a one-game, winner-take-all scenario.
If the Stars can make Makar look ordinary once again in Game 7, they should have a very good chance of advancing.
The Panthers emerged victorious in the battle of Florida, thanks in large part to Seth Jones.
When Florida acquired Jones, I’m not sure even they expected he would end up being this pivotal of a piece for its squad. The veteran blue-liner’s stock fell while with the Chicago Blackhawks, a team navigating a rebuild and not an ideal spot to pad defensive numbers. Jones ended up as a minus-108 in three-plus seasons in Chicago.
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The hope for the Panthers was that Jones could thrive in a lesser role and on a much better team, but things quickly took a sharp turn. Aaron Ekblad’s 20-game suspension that carried over into the playoffs forced Jones onto the top pair and into big minutes. Florida was also missing Dmitry Kulikov down the stretch, as well as forwards Matthew Tkachuk and Brad Marchand, so Jones quickly went from nice-to-have to one of the Panthers’ most important players.
Then, Ekblad received another two-game suspension against the Tampa Bay Lightning that will carry over into Round 2, again forcing Jones into more heavy lifting. He’s averaged nearly 25 and a half minutes a night in the post-season, which is more than he was getting at the end of his tenure with Chicago. Jones also scored a massive game-winning goal in Game 4 against the Lightning to give the Panthers a 3-1 series lead and they never looked back.
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This showing by Jones could also help Florida make some important decisions this summer. Ekblad will be a UFA at the end of the season, and perhaps the Panthers now trusts Jones enough, who is locked up at a reasonable number for three more seasons, to let Ekblad walk. They could use that money to perhaps keep someone like Sam Bennett in the fold. The Jones trade has given Florida plenty of flexibility both on and off the ice.
When the Blues acquired Cam Fowler back in December, the move didn’t come without criticism.
Fowler had just turned 33, and the Blues already had one of the oldest defence corps in the league. Justin Faulk (33), Torey Krug (34, on LTIR), Colton Parayko (31) and Nick Leddy (34) all have additional term on their deals and that doesn’t even include 40-year-old Ryan Suter, currently playing on a one-year pact. Fowler also wasn’t necessarily in peak form when the Blues added him either. He was coming off a 39-point season and went minus-59 over the 2022-23 and 2023-24 campaigns. It was a risk for St. Louis, to say the least.
St. Louis’ gamble has been rewarded, though. Fowler has been a revelation for the Blues, scoring 36 points in 51 regular-season games since the trade. That’s a 58-point pace over 82 contests, something Fowler never even came close to with the Ducks in his prime.
Fowler’s play has carried over to the post-season, and he has the Blues thinking upset. Tasked with a first-round matchup against the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Winnipeg Jets, St. Louis overcame a 0-2 deficit before losing Game 5. That’s in large part thanks to Fowler, who has nine points in the series thus far. He’s powered an offence that has figured out the likely Vezina Trophy winner for a decent stretch, putting 11 past Connor Hellebuyck in Games 3 and 4 at home. Now they’ll return to St. Louis for Game 6 in hopes of planting another seed of doubt in the minds of the Jets.
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Despite the 1 vs. 8 matchup, there were plenty of reasons for the Blues to have confidence heading into the post-season. Not many teams could claim to be hotter than the Blues down the stretch, as they won 12 straight games from mid-March to early-April, essentially ending the playoff race for a number of Western Conference teams in the process. Plus, Jordan Binnington found his swagger again after a terrific performance at the 4 Nations Face-Off. And then there’s Fowler, who has given the Blues a far deeper and more complete blue line than they’ve had in years.
If the Blues do end up going on another long run this spring, they’ll have an aggressive mindset to thank. Signing Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg to offer sheets went against the grain of how we typically see organizations build their teams in the summer. Both Holloway and Broberg are going to be key pieces of this Blues core for years to come. Then there was the dismissal of Drew Bannister early in the season in favour of Jim Montgomery. The move wasn’t so much about Bannister not doing a good job as it was Montgomery being a significant upgrade.
The addition of Fowler followed suit, as there would’ve been plenty of arguments for not adding a blue-liner in his mid-thirties with term to a team simply trying to stay in playoff contention. But the Blues don’t have a play-it-safe mentality. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
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Anthony Beauvillier, Washington Capitals
When the Washington Capitals picked up Anthony Beauvillier at the trade deadline back in March, the move was seen as almost an afterthought. Beauvillier felt like a depth piece for a roster that had great chemistry all season and didn’t want to do anything substantial to upset its room. He could provide some scoring punch in the bottom six and make the Caps a deeper squad.
As tends to happen in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, though, unheralded players often play a bigger role than expected. When Aliaksei Protas was injured late in the season, Beauvillier was thrust up the lineup and the Capitals put him with Alexander Ovechkin and Dylan Strome on their top line for an opening-round series against the Montreal Canadiens to great results. Beauvillier had five points in the first four games versus the Canadiens, including a big goal in game one that Washington desperately needed in a tight overtime win.
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To put Beauvillier’s production in more perspective, the veteran forward only had five points in 18 regular-season games after joining the Caps and went pointless in his final nine games leading up to the post-season. In fact, since the start of the 2023-24 season, Beauvillier has only had one other stretch where he scored five points in four games, so to say this run is an unexpected bonus for Washington is a big understatement.
Sure, you could say anyone would benefit by getting an opportunity to play with skaters as talented as Strome and Ovechkin, but not everyone can excel playing with good players. It’s not easy to take someone from the bottom six and have them skate and think as fast as it takes to succeed on the top line, but Beauvillier gives the Caps a luxury that not every team has.
Now that Protas is back, there’s a good chance Beauvillier will get pushed down the lineup again. Even so, it’s a comforting feeling for the Caps in knowing that when another inevitable injury arises, in what they hope will be a long playoff run, they have the flexibility of having Beauvillier in their back pocket to pivot to if needed.
