News broke on Thursday of Red Wings center Dylan Larkin formally requesting a trade. While the Colorado Avalanche would gladly take him, there are some complications.
The biggest one is the upcoming contract extension for defenseman Cale Makar.
The Avalanche and new (old?) general manager Joe Sakic need to lock Makar up sometime in the coming months if they want to avoid either an in-season negotiation period or risk Makar testing the free agent market.
Makar is currently making $9 million a year on his deal. In his upcoming contract, he could make even upwards of $20 million a season, as former defenseman Erik Johnson suggested recently.
To put that into perspective, the defenseman who is making the highest AAV on his current contract is Erik Karlsson, at $11.5 million.
No defenseman will come close to what Makar is going to be making.
The defenseman whose highest AAV on a contract signed in 2026 is Thomas Harley of the Dallas Stars at eight years and $10,587,500.
So, yeah. Makar’s extension is going to reset the defenseman market and it won’t even be close. In fact, Makar’s upcoming extension will be a market of its own. As long as there is only one Makar in the NHL, teams would be silly to offer anyone else that type of money.
But Makar is worth every penny. No, he didn’t win the Norris trophy this year, but he was still a productive player. He’s great on the defensive side of the game, but he also put up his third-straight 20-goal season and his fourth overall out of seven seasons.
Getting back to Larkin, finding a spot for him wouldn’t be easy either. Even if Makar’s contract wasn’t coming up—even if the salary cap wasn’t being elevated in 2026-27, would the Avalanche really trade someone like Valeri Nichushkin? Would the Red Wings want to do that?
Those are questions we probably won’t ever be able to find the answers to. I don’t think Larkin is going to end up in Colorado, and a Makar extension will make any disappointing feeling of that statement go away. Makar is far and away a more valuable piece to the Avalanche.
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