Scott MacDonald
(Edit courtesy of @Avalanche on Twitter)
I’ll be the first to admit that I had no idea who Devon Toews really was when the Avs traded for him back in October. My immediate thoughts were: Well, two second-round picks for an unsigned defenseman was kind of a hefty price to pay for a team that is already bursting at the seams with young defensive talent, isn’t it? And, oh yeah, what about Bowen Byram?
But in Joe Sakic we trust, right? Right. So I did my research on this Toews character.
From what I’ve read and the highlights I’ve watched, I’ve deduced he was well worth the two second-round picks. You can keep those, Lou. And sorry about your cap issues you had this offseason over on Long Island. Had it not been for the Islanders’ cap quandaries, Toews likely would’ve never been on the table.
At 26 years old, Toews hasn’t even really hit his prime. He’s a great puck-mover; he can anchor a second power-play unit; he’s smooth on his feet and he has a nose for the net. The guy loves to jump up on the rush and he has a heck of a shot, too. Sakic signed him for four years at $4.1 million a season and that could prove to be one of the most cost-efficient contracts in the NHL for a player with top-pairing potential.
Let’s talk about that last point.
Avs head coach Jared Bednar hopped on a podcast a couple weeks ago and casually dropped that he thinks Toews would be a good fit on the top pair next to Cale Makar.
“The addition to Toews sort of solidifies our D core,” Bednar says. “Looking at the minutes [as] Makar is starting to expand his role, he’s getting more minutes month by month in his pro career. (We were) Looking for a left-handed shot guy that can play with him or a guy that could play with him and eat up a lot of those minutes. We think a guy like Toews can do that.”
It’s important to note that Makar was not contextually relevant to the question that was asked of Bednar. The question that was asked was about having four solid forward lines and what forward pieces he’d put in place to put the Avs over the playoff hump and into the Stanley Cup Finals. Bednar answered by mentioning he liked the addition of Brandon Saad for his top-six… before adding that Toews, a defenseman, might be a perfect compliment to Cale Makar.
For a coach who is so lock-and-key about his lineup decisions, Bednar might’ve just Freudian-slipped one of his major lineup decisions.
Many would consider Toews to be Sakic’s depth signing on defense, someone who can round out that bottom four rather well while chipping in on some second-team special teams here and there. But according to Bednar, he tipped his hand and said Toews might be a little more than a mere depth signing. He could be playing on the top pair with one of the league’s best and brightest young defenseman. Or at least Bednar is going to try it. For now.
I don’t hate the idea. Ryan Graves may feel a little shrugged off, and he’ll surely see a dip in production not playing alongside Makar, but I think it could work well for everyone.
Devon Toews is used to playing big minutes. He averaged 20-and-a-half per game with New York last season, the second-most of Islanders D-men. Makar averaged a hair over 21:00, in 11 fewer games, mind you. Toews averaged more shifts per game. And if you into the analytics mumbo-jumbo, Toews had the best CorsiFor percentage of any Islanders D-man at 5-on-5. He also had the second-best goals-for and shots-for percentage on the team. On the man advantage, Toews actually beat out Makar in Corsi and shots-for. On paper, believe it or not, Makar and Toews are pretty similar players. On the ice, maybe Toews is a step slower, but the two think the same.
Now imagine them on the same pairing. That could be kind of exciting, no?
That seems to be where Bednar’s head is at, too. Here’s what his D pairs might look like:
Toews – Makar
Girard – EJ
Graves – Cole
Bednar is a big proponent of having the perfect pairings, meaning a righty on the right side and a lefty on the left. He’s mentioned it plenty before and he told me that very same fact again in a question I asked about a pairing he put together during one of the practices during the Avs training camp before they hit the Edmonton bubble. The above projected pairings achieves this. It also balances things out a bit more.
Sam Girard and Erik Johnson were fairly efficient as the second pair and I think they should stay that way. And now moving Graves to the bottom alongside Ian Cole helps balance everything out. Graves is a puck mover who can break the puck out. Nikita Zadorov and Cole were decidedly not so great at this last year. With Z gone and Graves reinserted there, the Avs have three D lines who can efficiently break out the puck.
The way I see it, having Toews and Makar on the top pair not only forms a formidable offensive pack-a-punch on the backend, it creates three balanced D lines for Bednar to rotate, which may mitigate some of the issues that a certain bottom defensive pairing had last year.
What are your thoughts?