Watch: Cale Makar on video
The Colorado Avalanche‘s biggest piece of offseason business is about to start. President of hockey operations Joe Sakic said extension talks with Cale Makar and Artturi Lehkonen will begin in mid-July, per Colorado Hockey Now. Both became extension-eligible on July 1, and both can reach unrestricted free agency next summer.
Makar is the conversation that will define the franchise’s next decade. His current deal expires after 2026-27, meaning a new contract would begin in 2027-28 — a season when the league’s rising salary cap puts the maximum individual salary at $22.6 million, a figure Sportsnet’s Rory Boylen raised in asking whether Makar becomes the NHL’s highest-paid player. The market has been moving all month: Anaheim just matched an offer sheet paying Leo Carlsson $18 million a season, and that’s a 21-year-old center with three NHL seasons, not a two-time Norris Trophy winner entering his prime.
Why it matters
Waiting carries a real cost. The cap keeps climbing, every comparable contract signed between now and next July raises the floor, and a Makar negotiation that drags into the season would become the loudest story in Denver. Colorado has seen the alternative version of this summer up close — division rivals are spending July managing arbitration filings and offer-sheet drama — and getting its franchise defenseman signed before camp would keep the roster’s attention on the ice, where Makar’s skating still drives everything the Avalanche do in transition.
Lehkonen’s negotiation is quieter but not minor. He’s entering the final season of a deal that carries a team-friendly $4.5 million cap hit, and his next contract will cost meaningfully more. Colorado front offices have historically paid the stars and filled around them; keeping a top-six winger who finishes the chances Makar and Nathan MacKinnon create is exactly the kind of decision that determines whether the contention window stays open.
For fantasy purposes, there’s no on-ice change to react to — Makar remains the first defenseman off the board in most formats, and an extension would simply remove any long-shot relocation noise from his dynasty outlook. Lehkonen is the subtler note: a raise usually follows a role, and if Colorado pays him top-six money, his power-play deployment and 25-goal ceiling come with it.
