Brock Nelson won’t be 54 forever.
We kid, of course. Nelson, the Avalanche’s affable center, the Olympic gold-medalist with the graying temples and silky stick, celebrates his 35th birthday in October. His contract expires after the 2027-’28 season. Same with rock-steady defenseman Josh Manson, who also turns 35 in about five weeks.
The Avalanche say their Stanley Cup window is open for the length of Cale Makar’s new eight-year, $163.2-million extension — a pact that runs through the 2034-35 season, when All Hail Cale turns 36.
No. 8 deserves every last penny. Makar’s an Av for life, and he deserves that, too. But that also puts the onus now on general manager Joe Sakic to make sure Cale’s life doesn’t turn miserable after ’28.
It takes a village to lift Lord Stanley. Even if the NHL salary cap keeps climbing, Sakic will have 39.2% of his available spending for ’27-28 locked up in just three players: Makar ($20.4 million), Nathan MacKinnon ($12.6 million); and Martin Necas ($11.5 million).
You win Presidents’ Trophies with your top two lines. You win Stanley Cups with your bottom two.
The Avs look great with the former. It’s the latter that worries you.
The depth to grind through eight killer weeks of playoff hockey, the best, and hardest, postseason in North America, is going to have to come cheap — or cheaper, at least — in order to balance the books for the second half of Makar’s mega-contract.
Which means finding and developing draft picks you keep instead of shipping them out at the trade deadline. Which means landing more Logan O’Connors to spice up your spine of Cale, Nate and Marty. Which means rolling up your sleeves as an organization to get busy building a beast for Makar 2.0.
“I’m not the one that gets to manage the team, so I let (Sakic) do that,” Makar quipped Monday at the Inverness Denver Hotel, where he and Sakic took questions a few days after agreeing to (for now) the biggest contract in NHL history.
“But think for myself, obviously, everybody talks about this window that we’re in right now, the ability that we have to win. And yeah, we feel that. But at the same time, I think that window is extended — I think my term of the (length of my) deal should reflect kind of how I feel this team should go, success-wise, and the opportunity that we’re going to have over that time to win championships.”
The Panthers won two Cups with two players (goalie Sergei Bobrovsky and center Aleksander Barkov) making $10 million each. Yet no NHL team has snatched Lord Stanley with a roster featuring multiple guys making $11 million or more. Sakic has two now (MacKinnon, Necas), with three, on paper, starting next year, when Makar’s extension kicks in.
Conventional hockey wisdom, so far, says that top-heavy rosters are good for fantasy leagues, but tend to flame out pretty quick on the postseason stage, when referees’ whistles get swallowed and the middle of the ice starts to resemble a clogged artery.
I asked Sakic Monday about that very argument, the fear among Avs fans that paying for greatness could push Makar and MacKinnon farther away from another parade. His response was unequivocal.
“(I) probably disagree with that statement,” Super Joe replied. “You can’t win without superstars.
“Yeah, you need depth. You (also) need your team playing really well at the right time when it comes to playoffs. You need bounces, but you need your players to be healthy. We ran into the injury bug a little bit last year, especially with Cale.
“We had a bad week (against Vegas) that costed us, but we had a team that was built to win. It didn’t happen, and we expect our team to be built to win for a long time … unless you have guys like Cale and Nate on your team, it makes it a lot harder.”
All true. On the other hand, have you looked at the Penguins lately? Pittsburgh rebuilt a young core on the fly around veterans Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang last winter — putting up 98 regular-season points (41-25-16) and returning to the postseason for the first time since 2022. The Penguins got 18% of their goals from players 24 years or younger, including Egor Chinakhov (18 goals), Ben Kindel (17), Elmer Soderblom (five) and Rutger McGroarty (three).
Per Spotrac.com, the average NHL roster as of Monday was 31% home-grown — or composed of players drafted by that club. The Avs’ percentage of “self-drafted” players was 20.9% — second lowest in the league, ahead of only Boston’s 19%.
Only four teams were below the 30% “self-drafted” threshold, and three were among those you’d expect: Colorado, Boston, Edmonton (21.3%) and Florida (28.3%). Pittsburgh was at 38%.
When it comes to chasing Cup No. 2, we all know No. 8 can do the job. But he sure as heck can’t do it alone.
“And yeah, it’s been a couple of tough endings (in the playoffs) recently,” Makar noted.
“And for myself, obviously, the pressure is going to be amplified. But at the same time, that’s within me to answer, to even bring up my game. And then to find pieces around that, those depth (guys), that are going to outperform in playoffs, that are going to bring us up even more … it’s exciting when we have all the top guys like that. But when we have a full team of guys, I think that’s the true confidence that it gave me to basically be here, hopefully, for the long, long, long haul.”
For Nelson, 54 may well be the new 30. But Makar needs some fresh blood if that contract is to age as well as a franchise hopes.
