Cale Makar named NHL’s best player in first month of the season

Colorado Avalanche superstar defenseman Cale Makar was the NHL’s best player in the month of October.

The league announced Makar as the “First Star” as it returned to action for the 2024-25 season. It’s Makar’s first time ever snagging the top honor in a month, which shows how hard it is to do, given his decorated career at just 26-years-old.

Cale Makar, Kyle Connor and Kirill Kaprizov have been named the NHL’s “Three Stars” for the month of October presented by GEICO.#NHLStats: https://t.co/DHERYUkmTi pic.twitter.com/VY3XA2Qb8w

— NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) November 1, 2024

As you can see on the graphic above, Makar came out of the gates fast. He had four goals and 15 assists, good for 19 points. That’s tied for the lead in the entire NHL — and he’s doing it as a defenseman. It’s frankly silly good Makar was able to pull that off.

He’s also just the second defenseman in NHL history to have points in a 11 straight games to begin a new campaign. The only other time that occured was the legendary Bobby Orr doing it all the way back in 1973-74.

Makar also had six multi-point performances in just 11 games, and also reached 350 points for his career. He’s the third-fastest blueliner in league history to hit the milestone (322 games) behind only Orr  (306 games) and Paul Coffey (319 games).

The Avalanche have a 5-6 record thus far, but Makar is doing his part. The team has faced a ridiculous amount of injures, and has yet to play a game with Valeri Nichushkin, Gabriel Landeskog or Artturi Lehkonen.

That should change shortly for Nichushkin (suspension) and Lehkonen (shoulder surgery). Things will get better as the Avs get healthier, but without the brilliance of Makar you don’t even want to think about where their record might be.

And the NHL recognized that on Friday by naming Cale Makar the “First Star” of October.