Canucks feel Hughes edges Makar
In battle of top rookie defencemen, Vancouver star could give team back-to-back Calder winners
Where would they be without them?
Now, there’s a question.
Customary statistical summations to determine a Calder Trophy winner shouldn’t carry as much weight this paused NHL season. No need for a raging debate whether goals and assists, shots per game, points per game or analytical assessments should decide whether Quinn Hughes or Cale Makar is rookie of the year.
There’s little to separate the superlative defencemen in traditional numerical categories, so you have to dig deeper.
Consider diligence, durability and deployment. Consider what Makar adds to the talent-laden Colorado Avalanche
and where the still-evolving Canucks would be without Hughes.
Hughes led the rush and quarterbacked the league’s fourth-ranked power play. He embraced a shutdown role with veteran Chris Tanev and crushed the argument that a smaller player couldn’t thrive in what many still consider to be a big man’s game.
“He’s a very special player,” Tanev said. “You see how agile, smart and confident he is. Everyone feeds off it. He brings a lot of aspects that no other player in the league can do.
“A lot are fast in a straight line, but to get from two feet left to four feet right in the blink of an eye, is very dangerous. He uses his body and edges tremendously to create that space.
“Most of the time he makes a great play and once in a while a play that’s not the best. But he shakes it off. He comes back and makes another great play.”
All that may not be enough to sway voters and give the Canucks back-to-back Calder winners. That hasn’t occurred since Bobby Orr and Derek Sanderson won the honour with the Boston Bruins in 1967 and 1968, respectively.
Former NHL goalie and TV analyst Kelly Hrudey put it best about a race that should be closer than some early balloting.
“Such a difficult decision,” he said Wednesday. “I’m leaning toward Hughes. His poise with the puck is highly unusual for a young defenceman. Does he ever make a bad pass? Both are outstanding players, so there isn’t a bad choice.”
However, at the halfway mark of this season, the first Calder Trophy trend was established. The Professional Hockey Writers’ Association, which determines the rookie of the year, reached a 117-member voting consensus that Makar topped Hughes for the honour.
At the three-quarter pole, Makar lengthened his lead, according to NHL.com. In voting by its writers, 11 of 18 cast a first-place ballot for Makar and only seven gave Hughes the nod.
What does that mean? Probably more from a PHWA perspective when the remainder of the shortened season is taken into consideration before final ballots are cast. But whether it’s a regional bias, or being influenced by those closer to the game, you’d like to think this is far from a Makar slam-dunk.
If you’re old-school and figure had Makar not missed 11 games to a pair of upper-body injuries, he would have easily closed a three-point gap on Hughes, then run with that. Hughes led all rookies with 53 points (8-45), 25 power-play points (3-22) and average ice time (21:53).
The Makar camp will also tell you that the Calgary native finished with 0.86 points per game, compared to 0.77 for Hughes and had a dozen goals compared to eight for Hughes. He registered more shots per game — 2.1 compared to 1.9 — and had a better shooting percentage of 9.9 compared to 6.3 for Hughes.
However, it’s a sliver of difference in most categories. The Corsi-For puck-controlling stats at even strength were 52.8 per cent for Makar and 52.7 for Hughes.
What can’t be debated is the poise and professionalism that Hughes and Makar have demonstrated in their devotion to the game.
Hughes comes from a rich hockey lineage and, after compiling 33 points (5-28) in 32 games last season to help the University of Michigan advance to the NCAA playoffs, there was still debate whether a 5-10, 175-pound puck-moving wizard could do his thing in the NHL.
He was going to turn heads. His effortless skating, elite edge work, precise passing and creativity were at the forefront, but his ability to defend and avoid contact injuries while triggering the transition converted naysayers.
It turned one-dimensional talk into multi-dimensional admiration because Hughes did the work. Speed allowed him to gain angles while defending to ensure good stick position. He’s wasn’t going to physically box out forwards, he frustrated them.
“Is there some extra incentive at this level to prove people wrong? There is, for sure,” Hughes said. “It surprised me at the start of this year when I started doing well that people thought: ‘Wow, we didn’t think this would happen.’
“I thought I’d be creating and getting points, but what I’m most proud of is that the coaching staff has trusted me in playing a shutdown role and that’s something I didn’t expect. And it means a lot to me.
“A lot of people said I couldn’t defend — and I’m still working on it — but just to have that (shutdown role), I thought I’d have it at some point in my career, but not now. And the coaching staff has been tremendous. I’ve seen guys come in who are really skilled and they have a leash on them.”
Hughes started skating at age two. His father, Jim, was a defenceman and team captain at Providence College and served as an assistant coach. He was also an assistant with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (ECAC), New Jersey (Roller Hockey), Orlando (IHL), Boston, (NHL), Toronto (AHL) and was head coach of Minsk (KHL). He was also director of player development for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
His mother, Ellen, was a three-sports star and University of New Hampshire Hall of Fame inductee and his younger brother, Jack, was selected first overall by the New Jersey Devils at the 2019 NHL entry draft in Vancouver. There’s also Luke, who played on the U.S. National Team development program’s under-17 team this season.
Even before Hughes played his first NHL game, his parents made sure his head wasn’t in the clouds.
“That’s what my parents keep stressing,” Hughes said. “It’s who we are, how we work and how we keep our feet on the ground.”
Makar’s story is just as good and he could be doing his thing in Vancouver had the 2017 draft in Chicago turned out differently.
The Canucks were enamoured of his skill set, but he went to the Avalanche with the fourth pick before the Canucks took Elias Pettersson with the fifth choice. It was a leap of faith in Pettersson with where the game is going — speed and skill over size and brawn — because Makar already looked like a player.
The Canucks interviewed Makar during the NHL draft combine. General manager Jim Benning and then-president of hockey operations Trevor Linden were then among a four-person entourage who took Makar to dinner later that night.
They were impressed with a polite and soft-spoken, teamfirst guy who checked a lot of character boxes.
“My parents raised me right and kept me humble as I was growing up,” Makar said. “I had to work for everything I got and I’m not a guy who likes to talk about himself. I have to give credit to my teammates and all the coaches I’ve had, for sure.”
It’s what Makar did in transition, how he found teammates and how he finished that had scouts salivating. In his last two full seasons in the Tier 2 Alberta Junior Hockey League, he compiled 35 goals and 100 assists in 111 games.
At the 2017 world junior A championship, he had five goals and four assists in eight games. That’s when the light bulb went on. As much as he set a goal to be the top-ranked defenceman at the draft, his performance at the worlds only heighten his resolve.
Makar also assisted on both goals in the RBC Cup final but the Brooks Bandits fell 3-2 in overtime to the Cobourg, Ont. Cougars.
If anything, this Calder debate comes more from the periphery. Hughes and Makar have a mutual admiration and have proved that the college route is a good road to the NHL.
“The first time I saw Quinn was when we were knocked out (NCAA playdowns) at UMass and a bunch of us went to the Regionals,” recalled the 5-11, 187-pound Makar. “And it was: ‘Damn, his skating is pretty legit.’ It’s been awesome to see what we have done for college hockey and helped us step into the pros.”
Hughes didn’t need much memory-jogging to recall Makar.
“I didn’t play against him in college, but I did in the world juniors and I knew he was really high-end,” Hughes said. “But the first time I really watched him was in the (NHL) playoffs last year and in his first game, he scored like 10 minutes in, and I thought: ‘Oh my God, this is insane.’”
In the end, we know this much: The Avalanche would be in the playoffs without Makar. Would the Canucks be in the qualifying round without Hughes?