Joe Sakic wants you to relax. Standing in front of reporters before an Avalanche alumni game, he said he's "pretty confident" Cale Makar gets signed before the season, that the dialogue has been "great," and that he's not worried. He also declined to treat September 15 as a deadline.
I love the posture. I don't trust the calendar behind it.
This is Sakic's confidence talking, not a signed deal. Nothing is done as of this writing. Sakic is Colorado's president of hockey operations and he's back running the GM chair after Chris MacFarland left for Nashville, so this is his call and his message. And the message is textbook negotiating theater. You never let the other side see the clock in your eyes. You radiate calm, you praise the "dialogue," and you don't hand Makar's agent leverage by admitting any date scares you.
Smart. But there's a real clock here, and pretending it doesn't exist doesn't make it slower.
The new NHL-NHLPA CBA takes effect September 16, 2026. Until September 15, Makar can sign an extension as long as eight years with the Avalanche. After that, the new agreement caps re-signings at seven. That's confirmed mechanics of the new deal, not spin or beat-writer speculation. September 15 is the last day Colorado can lock their franchise defenseman into the longest term possible.
One extra year of term matters this much because it's the cheapest insurance a team can buy on a generational talent. Makar helped win the 2022 Stanley Cup and took the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP after he put up 29 points, 8 goals and 21 assists, in 20 games. He's a two-time Norris winner. Entering 2026-27, he has 507 points in 470 regular-season games, the most of any player in the league since his debut on April 15, 2019. You want as many controlled years of that as the rules allow. Miss the window and you're capped at seven whether you like it or not.
My worry, and this is opinion: the market has already sprinted past Makar's current number, and every week without a signature makes the eventual deal cost more.
Makar is entering the final season of the six-year, $54-million contract he signed in July 2021, a $9-million cap hit. He became eligible for an extension on July 1. That same day, Chicago signed Bowen Byram to a six-year, $75-million extension, a $12.5-million AAV that kicks in for 2027-28 and eventually makes him the highest-paid defenseman in the league, ahead of Erik Karlsson's $11.5 million. Byram signed the first day he could. Colorado, nearly two months into Makar's eligibility, still hasn't.
I'm not saying Byram is the better player. I'm saying the comp is brutal. If a $12.5-million AAV is what the market pays now, Makar's $9-million hit looks like it belongs in a different era. One outlet noted his current number just missed the top ten among defensemen heading into this season. When your best player is that underpaid relative to the field, that's a countdown, not a bargaining edge.
Picture the version where September 15 comes and goes. Now you're negotiating under the seven-year cap, which means less term to spread the money and, realistically, a higher annual hit to get the years you want. And your best player is skating toward camp with his future unresolved, headed for an opener against the Kings at Ball Arena on September 30. Sakic insists Makar isn't worried. Maybe. But a contract year is a contract year. It follows a player into every road trip and every media scrum until it's signed.
There's a counter-read worth mentioning. One outlet suggested Makar himself may not be chasing maximum term. If that's true, the eighth year matters less to him, and the September 15 line loses some teeth. I'd treat that as unconfirmed. Betting your franchise plan on it would be a mistake.
Sakic has been singing this same tune for a while. Back in June he was already saying Makar would finish his career in Colorado and that talks with the agent were underway. The confidence is consistent. The signature isn't there yet. At some point calm stops being strategy and starts being a stall.
My call: get it done before September 15, eat whatever the eighth year costs, and stop treating the deadline like it's optional. The theater is working on us. I just hope it isn't working on Colorado too.
