Cale Makar’s $163.2M Deal Resets the NHL Defender Market
The NHL has its first $20 million man — and it is a defenceman. Cale Makar’s $163.2 million Colorado Avalanche extension is a warning shot to every GM with a star about to get paid.
The NHL has its first $20 million man — and it is a defenceman.
Cale Makar’s eight-year, US$163.2 million extension with the Colorado Avalanche is not merely a deserved payday for a brilliant player. It is a very expensive notice to every NHL general manager: the old pricing for elite talent has just been torched.
Makar will earn US$20.4 million a year from 2027-28 through 2034-35. That is the largest total contract and highest annual average value in league history. More importantly, it arrived while the NHL’s salary cap is rising fast and before the new collective bargaining agreement reduces the maximum term available to players re-signing with their own clubs.
This is what happens when a generational player, a hard cap and a looming rule change meet in the same room. Colorado did not just pay Makar. It bought certainty — and it paid a premium because certainty is bloody expensive.
Colorado paid for the player — and for not having a problem
Makar is 27, a two-time Norris Trophy winner, a Stanley Cup champion and the 2022 Conn Smythe winner. He has 507 points in 470 regular-season games — obscene production for a defenceman — and he put up 79 points in 75 games last season.
So let’s get the tedious argument out of the way: yes, he has earned an enormous contract. There are maybe a handful of players in the sport who can credibly claim to change a franchise’s odds of winning a Cup every night. Makar is one of them.
But “deserves it” is not how smart operators should look at this deal.
Colorado had one year remaining on Makar’s old six-year contract, which carried a US$9 million annual value. The new number is a 127% jump. That is not normal wage inflation. It is a market repricing.
Avalanche president of hockey operations and general manager Joe Sakic had publicly made extending Makar his priority in June. That was the sensible move. A club coming off a 121-point season and a Western Conference Final sweep by the Vegas Golden Knights does not improve its chances by letting its best defenceman spend a season inching toward leverage, distraction and, eventually, free agency.
The mistake people make is treating player contracts like a cost centre. For a contender, the right superstar is an asset you protect before the market gets uglier. Colorado knows exactly what Makar is. It knows the team built around him, Nathan MacKinnon and the rest of its core has a real championship window. It has chosen to remove the single biggest uncertainty hanging over that window.
That decision is expensive. It may also look cheap in a few years.
The US$20.4 million number is huge. The timing is bigger.
The NHL salary cap is US$104 million for 2026-27, up from US$95.5 million last season. It is projected to rise again to US$113.5 million in 2027-28, when Makar’s extension begins.
At first glance, US$20.4 million is frightening: it is roughly 19.6% of this season’s cap. Against the projected 2027-28 cap, it is about 18%. No manager wants one player consuming that much oxygen in the room.
But the point is not whether Makar’s number looks fat against today’s cap. The point is what it looks like against the caps in the middle and final years of an eight-year deal. NHL reporting points to a cap above US$120 million within two seasons and US$130 million within three. If that trajectory holds, the percentage pain drops while Makar remains locked in through 2034-35.
That is why elite-player contracts can look outrageous on signing day and perfectly rational later. The nominal dollars never move. The cap does.
This is the bit fans hate, but operators need to understand: you are not buying a player for 2026. You are buying a percentage of a future revenue pool. The clubs that understand that early get bargains. The clubs that wait until the future has arrived call it “an unprecedented market” and pay through the nose.
Makar’s deal also came in before the new CBA takes effect on September 16. Under the new rules, a player re-signing with his existing club will be limited to seven years rather than eight; free agents will be limited to six years. Colorado got the final extra year available under the old setup.
That extra year matters. It gives the Avalanche another season of control over a rare asset. But it also gives Makar another guaranteed US$20.4 million year when he will be 35 turning 36. That is the risk Colorado accepted to avoid the greater risk of a shorter deal, a bigger annual hit, or a future negotiation in an even hotter market.
Quinn Hughes just got a benchmark, whether Minnesota likes it or not
The immediate winner besides Makar is Quinn Hughes.
Hughes, now with the Minnesota Wild, is in the final year of a contract carrying a US$7.85 million annual value and has been eligible to sign an extension since July 1. His agent, Pat Brisson, no longer has to sell Minnesota on some abstract idea that elite defencemen should be paid like franchise drivers. He has a US$20.4 million precedent sitting on the table.
Makar is better positioned than most to set the ceiling: younger than some rivals, decorated, productive and central to a genuine contender. Still, benchmarks are powerful things. They do not dictate every contract, but they change the conversation from “can we possibly get there?” to “why not?”
Zach Werenski of the Columbus Blue Jackets will be eligible for a new deal next offseason. Matthew Schaefer of the New York Islanders, fresh from a Calder Trophy-winning season, is another looming case. Then there are the defencemen already locked into numbers that suddenly look like sensible business: Montreal’s Lane Hutson at US$8.85 million a year, Dallas’s Thomas Harley at US$10.587 million, Anaheim’s Jackson LaCombe at US$9 million, Buffalo’s Rasmus Dahlin at US$11 million and Detroit’s Moritz Seider at US$8.55 million.
The lesson is not that those players are underpaid tomorrow. The lesson is that long-term pricing on young, elite defencemen is becoming one of the sharpest arbitrage opportunities in hockey.
Makar’s extension follows a ridiculous 11 months in which the NHL’s top annual salary benchmark was reset four times. Kirill Kaprizov signed an eight-year, US$136 million deal at US$17 million a year in September 2025. Anaheim matched offer-sheet pressure by giving Leo Carlsson US$18 million annually over five years in July. San Jose then gave Macklin Celebrini US$94 million over five years, or US$18.8 million annually. Makar swept past them all within weeks.
That is not a gradual market. That is a stampede.
The overlooked angle: Colorado may have avoided a false economy
There will be people saying Colorado should have squeezed Makar because he had a year left. That sounds tough at the pub. It is often rubbish in the real world.
Trying to “win” a negotiation with a core employee can be a very dumb victory. If the player is truly irreplaceable, dragging it out saves a few dollars only if the market stays still, the player stays healthy, the cap behaves, rival comparables do not explode and the relationship remains pristine. That is a lot of things to get right merely to feel clever.
Colorado instead paid the known price for a known asset. It did so before the term rules changed and before Hughes, Werenski or somebody else had the chance to make US$20 million feel ordinary.
Now, there is genuine downside. A defenceman’s body takes punishment. An eight-year promise always contains injury risk, aging risk and performance risk. Makar’s US$18.8 million guaranteed final-year signing bonus makes that late-stage commitment especially real. Colorado has not eliminated risk; it has concentrated it.
But a contender cannot build a strategy around the hope that its best player will become cheaper. Hope is not a business model. The Avalanche have made a clear judgment: Makar is worth more to them than the flexibility they surrendered.
I reckon they are right.
What this means for you
You do not run an NHL team. But the Makar deal is still useful because it exposes three rules that apply to every serious business.
First: lock up exceptional people before the market tells you what they cost. If someone is genuinely rare — the operator who makes difficult things look easy, the salesperson who brings in the right customers, the technical leader nobody can replace — delaying the conversation is not prudence. It is often a decision to pay more later.
Second: judge commitments as a percentage of the future, not simply as a dollar figure today. A big salary, software contract or long-term supplier agreement can be idiotic if revenue is stagnant. But if your economics are growing and the asset is vital, today’s scary number can become tomorrow’s bargain. Do the maths honestly. No wishful thinking, no PowerPoint perfume.
Third: understand deadlines created by rule changes. Colorado had a known CBA date: September 16. In your world, it might be a lease renewal, a tax change, an expiring exclusivity clause or a funding window. Deadlines shift bargaining power. The best operators move before the stampede, not after it.
Cale Makar did not break the NHL salary market by himself. The cap, the CBA timing and a league overflowing with young stars did that.
He just happened to be good enough to send the invoice.