Before launching his Division 1 head coaching career at St. Lawrence University, Greg Carvel spent 12 years as an assistant behind National Hockey League benches.
Carvel helped both the Anaheim Ducks and Ottawa Senators reach the Stanley Cup Final and coached Sergei Fedorov and Dominik Hasek before they were inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. He’s helped players succeed at the sport’s highest level and knew all along that star Colorado Avalanche rookie Cale Makar could be the next in line following two seasons at the University of Massachusetts.
“I was comparing him to Erik Karlsson and Connor McDavid during all the interviews by the second half of last year, and that wasn’t a joke,” said Carvel, the reigning Spencer Penrose National Coach of the Year, now in his fourth year at UMass.
“I’ve coached that level, so I know the caliber of player there. I knew that he is an elite player, a real unique package.
“He didn’t score real well at our level (21 goals in 75 college games), but he’s a smart player and I knew that, in the NHL, he’d have more urgency to shoot. He shoots the puck tremendously well and jumps up in the play, so I’m not surprised he’s scoring and getting points. When he first got up there, you could tell he was being respectful, but his physical play is starting to come around as well.”
Makar became an instant point of pride for Massachusetts fans when he set foot on the Amherst campus in the fall of 2017, just months after Colorado selected him with its No. 4 overall pick. The Calgary native put a bow on a historic 31-win season by becoming the first player in Minutemen history to win Hockey East Player of the Year honors and then taking home the Hobey Baker Award.
After returning to Mullins Center to see his Hobey Baker banner unveiled on Dec. 6, the night before his Avs played at Boston’s TD Garden, the 5-foot-11, 187-pound defenseman’s focus had returned to sustaining his elite caliber of play as an NHL rookie.
Of course, even generational talents like Makar go through typical learning curves for first-year professional players.
The NHL “is a grind,” he said. “You just have to keep your body in tune and be ready for everything that comes your way. Recovery is so big because the schedule is so grueling. It’s just about being able to take care of your body because your body is your job now.”
The numbers certainly suggest that Makar is making the necessary adjustments to the pro game and helping a team that has vaulted into the conversation as one of the NHL’s best teams.
He was the NHL’s Rookie of the Month for November after totaling seven goals and 16 points — the highest single-month totals for a rookie defenseman since 1989 and 1993, respectively — in 14 games. Makar became the fourth blueliner in NHL history to log at least 20 points in his first 20 career games, and his 32 points are currently second among all rookies.
Makar joined the Avs during last year’s Stanley Cup playoffs after helping UMass advance to its first-ever Frozen Four. Despite playing in just 10 games, he led all of the league’s rookie defensemen in playoff scoring and matched an Avalanche/Quebec Nordiques franchise record with one goal and six assists.
In hindsight, that time has been beneficial for the 21-year-old’s development entering his first full season as a pro.
“Being able to come in, get to know the guys and the systems, was very important,” said Makar, who points to star center Nathan MacKinnon, plus Matt Calvert, Gabriel Landeskog and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare as some of the team’s many role models.
“Anybody in that situation gets a leg up on the competition coming into this year.”
“I feel like he’s a real mature player for his age,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said. “He got thrown right into the situation where he doesn’t have time to think about it, came in right out of college and did an amazing job. This year he has higher expectations for himself and he’s been able to settle in and understand that he can be an impact player for us in a bunch of different ways, not just offensively.”
Makar has accomplished those goals, becoming a responsible player on the defensive side of the puck and a key member of Colorado’s top power-play unit. Now, a Calder Trophy could very well become the centerpiece of Makar’s expansive trophy case come June.
He already has established himself among the game’s best, joining a defense corps that include the likes of second-year NHLer Ryan Graves, Nikita Zadorov and Samuel Girard. Colorado’s back-end pipeline also includes this past June’s No. 4 overall pick, Bowen Byram.
With his career having taken off in just a matter of months, Makar looks back at the college game as a major reason for his early successes.
“(Playing in college) is not an easy routine like everybody thinks because you’re just playing on the weekend,” he said. “You’re practicing and have classes during the week, so it helped getting in that consistent routine and being consistent every day at the rink.
“UMass is a special place. They give you all the tools to succeed and it’s your job to use them. I’m thankful for the time I had there and the coaching staff and what they did for us.”
The growing success of Carvel’s UMass program is a direct result of hard work put forth by the likes of Makar and Mario Ferraro, a fellow would-be junior who emerged as a third-team All-Hockey East defender last winter.
Ferraro, a second-round pick of the San Jose Sharks in 2017, and Makar returned to UMass for their second season together and continued to build a program that now stands firmly among the nation’s elite.
Makar’s departure to the NHL as soon as UMass fell to Minnesota Duluth in last April’s title game was inevitable, but some, including Carvel, felt that Ferraro could have benefited from another year developing his game on campus. Ferraro has proven doubters wrong with an encouraging debut in San Jose.
The two defensemen now represent UMass at the highest level, having left a legacy that will last forever and setting an example for a current team of Minutemen.
“I think the guys on our back end that have the ability to play at that level can say, ‘Hey, this is how I stacked up against Cale and Mario, and that’s the standard that will get me to the NHL,’ ” Carvel said. “It’s a good measuring stick for our guys, but they also got to see the character of those two kids, their work habits, their emotional stability and how they handled situations.
“You can feel the connection that Cale has to the school and the fans have to him. It’s special. He came here and got better, but he committed to what we were doing in building a culture and building a program.”
@JoshuaKummins
