Ryan Johansen was near the front of the net on the first day of prac­tice this sea­son with his new team when he saw Avalanche super­star Cale Makar shoot the puck from the perime­ter of the offen­sive zone.

Johansen has been cred­it­ed with a tip­ping a shot 76 times in his career, and scored a goal on near­ly one-quar­ter of them. As the puck whis­tled past him, some­thing strange happened.

He flinched.

It didn’t take long for Johansen to learn just how dif­fer­ent Makar’s wrist shot can be.

“Cale came over and was like, ‘Don’t wor­ry, ‘Jo’ — I’m not gonna hit you,’” Johansen said. “That just gives you an under­stand­ing of how con­fi­dent he is with where he can place it.”

Makar has evolved into the league’s best all-round defense­man in his young NHL career. He won the Nor­ris Tro­phy in 2022, might have had a chance to repeat last sea­son had he not missed so many games with injuries and is cur­rent­ly on a crash course with Vancouver’s Quinn Hugh­es for what could be an epic two-man race for the award in the final months of this campaign.

He can do it all. He is among the best skaters and passers in the world. His abil­i­ty to defend and get his team out of dan­ger, along with world-class offen­sive impact, might ulti­mate­ly place him among the all-time greats by the end of his career.

One skill that can go over­looked at times is his abil­i­ty to shoot the puck. Specif­i­cal­ly, Makar’s wrist shot is the best at his posi­tion in the NHL.

“The release is real­ly quick,” first-year Avs for­ward Jonathan Drouin said. “(Valeri Nichushkin) and I have talked about it. We don’t always know when it’s com­ing for the tips. He’s so fast with his feet that it almost makes it look faster when he releas­es it. I think he hides his release real­ly well, where he’s mov­ing his feet and you don’t real­ly think he’s going to shoot it but he still has the abil­i­ty to.”

Makar’s wrist shot com­bines speed, decep­tion and pin­point accu­ra­cy. He became the franchise’s all-time lead­ing goal scor­er among defense­men Wednes­day with No. 76.

He col­lect­ed a loose puck in the neu­tral zone while Col­orado was short­hand­ed, zipped past a cou­ple of Wash­ing­ton Cap­i­tals play­ers and then fired a wrist shot through one last defend­er. It was a glove-side shot and the goal­tender bare­ly react­ed before the puck was behind him.

“He has a his­to­ry of cre­at­ing space for him­self using his speed,” Avalanche skills coach Toby Petersen said. “So he finds him­self in a posi­tion to get that shot off a lot, because you saw it (Wednes­day) night on the rush — he comes with so much speed that the ‘D’ backs off and then he uses the ‘D’ as a screen. He cre­ates space for him­self to do what­ev­er he wants with the puck.”

Fifty-one of Makar’s career goals have been logged as a wrist shot, while 10 more have come on snap­shots. He’s tied for third among defense­men with 11 goals this sea­son, and sev­en of them were wristers.

The days of the top offen­sive defense­man blast­ing slap shots from the points are long gone. Makar’s wiz­ardry comes from a dif­fer­ent set of skills that all coa­lesce in a unique weapon for the Avalanche.

How does he do it? What about Makar makes his wrist shot so effective?

“I could come up with about 10 dif­fer­ent answers to this,” Petersen said.

We’ve already touched on how Makar can score off the rush. His abil­i­ty to join the for­wards, or even lead them, is among the best in the league.

What sep­a­rates him is his work along the blue line. When any­one thinks of a clas­sic slap shot from a defense­man, it’s almost always com­ing from either the left or right point.

Mod­ern defense­men have to be able to move along the top of the offen­sive zone. Makar does this as well as any­one. He can shoot from any­where, and just at about anytime.

That’s one thing his team­mates mar­vel at.

“He gets off real­ly quick and it’s so accu­rate,” defense part­ner Devon Toews said. “It’s got speed on it, even when he’s in a tough spot or he’s off-bal­ance on his back foot, he’ll still get real­ly good juice on it.”

Added Drouin: “I wouldn’t want to (penal­ty) kill with Cale on top, to be hon­est with you. The feet and the hands move so quick. You might think you’re in the shoot­ing lane and half a sec­ond lat­er, you’re not at all and he’s get­ting the shot through. He’s so unpre­dictable that some­times he’ll even sur­prise us.”

Ear­li­er in this sea­son, the Avalanche pow­er play became too one-dimen­sion­al. It relied too heav­i­ly on Makar shoot­ing from the mid­dle of the ice at the top of the zone. It was still an effec­tive strat­e­gy — either he scored or one of the for­wards tipped one of his shots. At one point, the Avs scored a pow­er-play goal in nine straight games.

Jared Bed­nar felt it could be even bet­ter. Drouin moved to the top unit to infuse a lit­tle more cre­ativ­i­ty, and the group focused more on mov­ing the puck quick­er and find­ing open­ings from all angles. Nathan MacK­in­non scored twice on the pow­er play Wednes­day night from near­ly the same place on the ice, but how Makar and Mikko Ranta­nen teamed up to get him the open look changed.

Nichushkin leads the NHL with eight tip-in goals this sea­son. Ranta­nen is tied for sec­ond with sev­en. Most of those have come on Makar shots.

He has the abil­i­ty to shoot at his team­mates’ sticks. He and Ranta­nen have devel­oped enough chem­istry where Makar will act like he’s going to shoot on net, but he’s actu­al­ly aim­ing for Rantanen’s stick off to the side for a tight-angle deflec­tion that goalies have no chance on if it connects.

“Just how mechan­i­cal and effort­less it looks for him. It’s so pre­cise,” Johansen said. “Those things are so hard to do and he makes it look so easy. It’s just anoth­er rea­son in this spe­cif­ic instance why he’s so special.”

Makar’s nat­ur­al ath­let­ic abil­i­ty is a big part of this. MacK­in­non said he’s good at every sport they’ve played togeth­er, whether it’s hit­ting the ball a mile on the golf course or hoop­ing on a bas­ket­ball court.

His elite work eth­ic is also a sig­nif­i­cant factor.

“I think a lot of it is just lots of prac­tice,” Makar said. “The big thing is always try­ing to be decep­tive. I try to put myself in a spot where I can change the angle very read­i­ly. That’s how I look at it.

“There’s a lot of prac­tice to try and get that quick snap from it.”

Makar also said he can shoot it hard­er now than ear­li­er in his career, and he’s increased his abil­i­ty to be less straight­for­ward with when, where and how he shoots it.

Petersen broke down how Makar is able to gen­er­ate so much velocity.

“When he has the time and space, he gets his whole body into it,” Petersen said. “His low­er body is engaged. He gets his hands away out in front of him to real­ly use the flex in his stick. He uses all the tools at his dis­pos­al to rip the puck.

“If he gets his hands out in front of him and adds that lit­tle extra time as he’s pulling his top hand back, it gets a lit­tle more bow on the stick and the puck is just going to fly off his blade.”

Makar has spent most of his life shoot­ing pucks. Defense­men from his gen­er­a­tion didn’t spend near­ly as much time work­ing on the big slap shot, because for­wards are so much bet­ter now at block­ing them.

He needs to be quick and decep­tive. Just shoot­ing through bod­ies dur­ing prac­tice is one way to hone his craft, but Petersen detailed anoth­er way that might involve few­er instances of friend­ly fire.

Makar takes a tire out on the ice with him. He places it about three feet in front of him. The object is shoot the puck through the tire, but still place it in one of the four cor­ners of the net.

“That sim­u­lates what he can do on a pow­er play,” Petersen said. “He can move across the blue line and cre­ate a seam for him­self or just enough space to get that puck off in such a hur­ry that it’s a threat to score every time he shoots.”

Much like how one of MacKinnon’s super­pow­ers is the sta­mi­na he builds up with rig­or­ous train­ing, Makar’s abil­i­ty to shoot the puck at a world-class lev­el starts away from the ice surface.

Old­er play­ers focused on build­ing brute phys­i­cal strength. For mod­ern NHLers, it’s just like the evo­lu­tion that has occurred in oth­er sports. NFL quar­ter­backs like Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen gen­er­ate incred­i­ble pass­es not with pure arm strength, but through hip rota­tion and mechan­ics that start from their core.

“The core work these guys are doing is huge,” Petersen said. “There’s an under­stand­ing that goes back not lots of years, but sev­er­al years now about where pow­er is gen­er­at­ed from. It’s in your core. These guys do so much core work to stay strong. A wrist shot, as much as any shot, is about core strength. The abil­i­ty to pull through with the arms and shoul­ders and every­thing work­ing in con­junc­tion with each oth­er is huge.

“If you don’t put the time in the weight room, you have no chance of shoot­ing like Cale. I don’t care who you are. You have to put in the time to get stronger and quick­er and more explo­sive, not just with your feet and your legs but your upper body too. It all works together.”

One of Makar’s team­mates who knows him best offered a sim­pler explanation.

“What­ev­er he does, no one else can do,” Toews said.

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