LOVELAND, Colo. — The Colorado Eagles played one of their most physical games of the year on Friday against the San Jose Barracuda (SJS). Saturday night had a different tone from the start of the game. Seeing the professional debut of Taylor Makar made the night more exciting for everyone in attendance. The Eagles have a goal in mind, and that is the Division Title. With the victory tonight, they have five games left in the season and need nine points to do it. So every game is a must win for them right now. On Friday night, they walked away with a 3–1 victory and plans to do more.

Takeaways

Colorado did not exactly turn up the physical game on Saturday, they more avoided it than anything. They were doing a lot better job keeping their heads up and looking for the oncoming hits to move out of the way. With some of the lineup changes, bringing in Oskar Olausson, Makar, and Nikita Prishchepov had the right effect. They bring the right amount of physical play to annoy the other team and wear them down. Chase Bradley was another player that took nothing the Barracuda was throwing at him, throwing several reverse hits their way.

The Eagles currently list Jacob MacDonald, knocked out of Friday’s first period, as day-to-day. He has an upper-body injury. During Saturday’s second period, we saw Jean-Luc Foudy go down the tunnel. He never returned to the game after that.

Taylor Makar

Makar played on the fourth line in his Saturday debut with the Eagles. He showed he can truly be a grinder with taking a beating. Just in one shift, Makar had three hits and avoided two hits thrown his way. He typically was on the ice for 30–40 seconds and then off the ice. In the third period, Makar worked down the middle of the ice, where he bodied the defender out of the way. Then the puck rolled off of his stick. Overall, for a professional debut, Makar played well. He knows his role at this level and has fully embraced it.

“Oh yeah, [my nerves were] pretty high,” Makar said. “I tried to keep them calm. I think once I stepped on the ice with the guys for warm-ups. It was just all fun. You know, guys were laughing and stuff and just tapping me on the shin pads. But I think it was a great experience. And just through that one game, I feel like I learned a lot to carry through.”

“I thought he did well,” said head coach Aaron Schneekloth. “Obviously a tough first game to get into, but you can see the tools are there. Like he gets up and down the ice with good speed. You can tell he’s a couple of really nice forechecks where he got in, got physical, disrupted the puck, saw him at the net for any crease, using his side so obviously a work in progress. But just like what we saw with Cooper last night. A lot of promising things, and he’s only going to get better every single day.”

Upcoming

The Eagles wrap up their last home stand of the regular season with the Henderson Silver Knights (VGK) starting on Friday. The game will be available to stream on AHLTV on FloHockey.com and starts at 7 p.m. MT.

Interview