Dig into the details. Devon Toews is as important as any Avalanche player – The Denver Post

It doesn’t take an astute hockey mind to appreciate the explosive, electric play of Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar, who routinely produces the sort of highlight plays of superstar forwards.

But when it comes to his top-pair partner, Devon Toews, you’ve got to dig into the details to appreciate his play.

The 6-foot-1,191-pound blueliner is a master at possessing the puck and distributing it to the right outlet. His defending is effective and clean. And Toews has shown a knack for being in the right place at the right time.

If a goaltender is a team’s most important player, the fourth-year veteran is probably in a five-way tie for second among the Avs with Makar, fellow superstar Nathan MacKinnon, winger Mikko Rantanen and team captain Gabe Landeskog.

“I love when he’s on the ice,” goalie Darcy Kuemper said of Toews, who is in his second season with Colorado.

Toews missed the first nine games of the season while recovering from offseason shoulder surgery — a period that saw the Avs go 4-4-1.

Since then, Colorado is 17-3-2 with Toews in the lineup as he’s notched a point in 16 of those games. Toews is tied for an NHL-high plus-26 plus-minus rating, and he’s yet to produce a single minus game all season. He’s also only been assessed just two minor penalties despite leading the Avs in average ice time at 25:05.

“He’s always in the right position. He’s always got the right read. He’s such a smart player. He’s so smooth and calm out there,” Kuemper said. “… He’s one of those rare guys that’s so good at both ends of the rink as a defenseman.”

Toews and Makar make up one of the NHL’s best defensive pairings.

Toews is top-10 in the league in ice time and second among all NHL defensemen (behind Makar) in points-per-game (1.09 to 1.17). If Makar is the midseason favorite to win the Norris Trophy as the league’s best defenseman, Toews is the dark horse.

He might not be deemed Norris material because he doesn’t quarterback the No. 1 power play, but there isn’t a defenseman in the league who could unseat Makar for that spot.

Yet Toews’ measured, efficient play on the blue line is as reliable as it gets.

“It’s not exceptionally dynamic like, say, Cale can bring, but it’s just good, smart hockey and it’s done with a certain pace that makes him successful,” Avs coach Jared Bednar said.

Part of what makes Toews so successful is the 27-year-old’s penchant for always being prepared and studying his opponents extensively.

“He thinks through the game. That’s part of his preparation — he has a real good understanding of what opponents are going to do, what we need to do to have success, and then he goes out and implements that in his game and executes,” Bednar said. “As good of a skater as he is, he has good vision, good hands. All the things that you need to be a good player in this league, he has them.”

Toews played for three years at Quinnipiac University, one of the few NCAA programs that recruited him out of British Columbia. Quinnipiac coach Rand Pecknold said Toews was probably his best player on the Bobcats’ team that lost in the 2016 NCAA championship game to North Dakota to end Toews’ junior year.

Pecknold watched closely as Toews developed for nearby Bridgeport (Conn.) of the American Hockey League for 2 1/2 seasons before the Islanders finally called him up. Toews’ trade to the Avalanche in 2020 was the best thing that could happen to him at the time, Pecknold said. Toews was a restricted free agent coming off a modest $700,000 salary, and the Islanders said they couldn’t afford the inevitable hefty raise. After the trade, he signed a four-year, $16.4 million deal ($4.1 million annual cap hit) with the Avs.

“I thought he was really good with the Islanders, but with (Islanders coach Barry) Trotz, one of the better coaches in the NHL in my opinion, Trotz kind of already had his veterans and Toews was kind of his third-pairing guy,” Pecknold said. “The trade to Colorado allowed him to blossom. I give Jared Bednar all the credit in the world because he gave Devon a chance — an opportunity to be more than a third-pairing guy. Obviously, he’s getting rewarded for it now.”

The trade was finalized Oct. 12, 2020, two days after Toews married Kerry, his sweetheart from Quinnipiac.

Toews was initially lukewarm about the deal. He was coming off his first full NHL season and deemed a rising star for the Islanders, who advanced to the 2020 Eastern Conference final. He didn’t want to leave New York, and he wasn’t thrilled about going west — despite knowing the Avs were Stanley Cup favorites entering the shortened 2021 season.

“The trade itself, that was crazy. We were still in the wedding mode, happy about all that, and the trade was kind of a shock to the system,” Toews told The Post. “Obviously, it worked out. We’re happy about it. But at the time, not so happy about it — just because we were very comfortable.

“My wife’s family is from Jersey, so they were always close. We’ve both been on the East Coast the last five, six years. So there was a lot of comfortability there.”

Since the trade, Toews has connected well with teammates in Colorado, just as he did at previous stops in his career. He once honored former Quinnipiac teammate Sam Anas and the memory of Anas’ late mother at his wedding. And he’s brought that kind of love to the Avs’ locker room.

“Just a really easy-going, good teammate — a valuable guy that’s really easy to be around,” said Avs defenseman Erik Johnson, the team’s most senior player. “It’s only his second year here, but he’s fit in really, really well. Heck of a trade too. He’s very rare, very good. So that was a great find by Joe (Sakic) and his staff and he’s fit in great — really big addition for us.”

If there’s anyone who isn’t surprised, it’s Pecknold.

The Quinnipiac coach had long been convinced Toews was a big-time player. Advanced analytics such as Corsi, which measures puck possession time and the ability to score more goals than you allow, indicated the defenseman’s understated value all the way back in college.

“Devon was a Corsi machine. His last year, we were No. 1 in the nation almost the entire year. We had a great team but Devon was probably our best player,” Pecknold said. “He flew under the radar because he doesn’t put up huge numbers. It was like, if he’s on the ice, we have the puck. It’s that simple.”

That recipe has been translated quite well to Colorado, too.

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