CALGARY, Alberta — The sun dips beneath a snow-peaked horizon beyond where the building sits, tucked away on the wooded hillside of a quiet and well-kept neighborhood.

Kids carry large gear bags through a parking lot toward the sprawling two-rink facility on this chilled November weeknight as a soft orange glow illuminates a white banner above the entryway, with three words in red capitalized letters: CROWCHILD TWIN ARENA.

Welcome to the home of Cale Makar’s hockey education.

It’s where the meteoric rise of a 21-year-old Colorado Avalanche sensation began. How the early frontrunner for NHL Rookie of the Year developed into an every-tool defenseman, a magician with the puck, and pure lightning on the ice. Why the local kid from the Crowchild Blackhawks youth program made it so big, so fast.

Don’t be fooled by Makar’s slight build, rosy cheeks and polite smile. He’s a 5-foot-11 generational talent who embraces the spotlight and collects points at a historic pace.

Not buying the hype 39 games into Makar’s young NHL career? Ask Avalanche superstar Nathan MacKinnon for his perspective.

“Already one of the best players I’ve ever played with,” MacKinnon said. “There’s not really one defenseman in the league that’s like him. He’s already one of the fastest players in the league. His first two or three steps are amazing. I could go on and on all day.”

The birth of this star began here at the Crowchild Twin.

Enter the front doors, turn right, take the stairwell to a second-floor hallway and soak in its history. Blackhawks team portraits dating back to the 1980s are framed along one long wall. There are two Hobey Baker Award winners (college hockey’s Heisman Trophy). A dozen players who signed NHL contracts.

Look closely and you’ll spot Makar, from ages 5 to 12, on each step of his hockey schooling. The sharpest student of them all.

Who knew this scrawny blue-eyed kid with the messy blond hair would grow up to become an elite talent in his rookie NHL season? Pat Laughton did. The former general manager at Crowchild Twin for 33 years recalled the first time Gary and Laura Makar brought their oldest son, Cale, to the rink.

“He was maybe 4 years old and hadn’t even started playing Tykes yet,” Laughton said. “He was skating and I said to Laura, ‘This kid is going to be a hockey player.’ With Cale, you knew from Day 1.”

***

Walk back downstairs and hear laughter about rubber chickens, tug-of-rope, tires, and, of course, the confused reactions of parents watching practice: What in the world are they doing?

Three former youth coaches responsible for Makar’s first hockey lesson plans — Gary Makar, Angelo Geremia and Charle Dumba — huddle in the Crowchild Twin lobby to educate an outsider.

“Others had always done it one way: Show up, tie the skates, and the kids would go play a full-ice game,” Geremia said. “We were trying to flip that idea, build skills and develop kids into better hockey players for when they get older.”

Makar’s earliest hockey memories are fuzzy, but he chuckles at the mention of rubber chickens. “They were for a game like capture-the-flag. You always have to have fun,” he recalled.

Those odd items were all practice props, often used with the ice split into three sections, where skaters rotated stations for individualized instruction. Drills progressed with a player’s experience.

Pat Puddifant called them “small area games.” He runs the skate sharpening shop, Blades, at the Crowchild Twin from a small room just off the ice where signed photographs from notable NHL players adorn the inside walls. Jarome Iginla, Chuck Kobasew, Jay Beagle, Jeremy Colliton and Brayden Point, to name a few. They’ve all trusted their skates to Puddifant.

Makar’s photo is framed in his Avalanche uniform and his signed message reads: “Thanks for maximizing my edges and all your skating support.”

Puddifant tested young Blackhawks’ hand skills, quickness and vision. Makar devoured each of his lessons, finishing complex drills in the same amount of time with or without the puck. That same mastery now makes his NHL opponents look silly, with stop-and-go movement equivalent to an NBA ankle-breaker, and no-look passes that would make Nuggets star Nikola Jokic blush.

“It’s the sneakiness, it’s the delays, pauses and freak-me-out stuff,” Puddifant said. “We talk about that a lot in our games, that magic or ah-ha moment, and you would see it with him.”

The only debate for young Cale was picking a position. His smaller stature and incredible technical ability led many to suggest centerman or wing. Gary Makar and the Crowchild coaches, though, always envisioned Cale as a defenseman.

“I was absolutely shocked when they told me,” said Jeff Ovens, Makar’s former coach at the STIX Hockey Academy. “He was 12 or 13 and I remember saying, ‘Gary, he can’t be a defenseman. His offensive skillset is the best I’ve ever seen.'”

Gary Makar’s response?

“Give it time,” he said. “You’ve got to watch him play.”

***

Rewind to the spring of 2009, Makar’s coming-of-age moment inside Crowchild Twin, and the first thing you might notice is the smell.

Volunteers are churning out endless stacks of pancakes for parents and kids, many of whom traveled thousands of miles from across North America to compete in the Crowchild Challenge youth hockey tournament. Hurry, the opening ceremony is about to begin.

Small sections of bleachers fill quickly with standing room only around the rink. More than 50 scouts show up. The crowd roars when Makar and his Blackhawks teammates are given Olympic-style introductions, walking together in single-file onto the ice, and followed by each team in the tournament. Bagpipes are playing. A fog machine pushes white clouds across the ice.

“People would be standing three lines back from the boards,” Makar said. “It was crazy.”

Makar, then 9-years-old, had graduated from rubber chickens to pucks and his technical training translated seamlessly to games. Crafting Makar into a defenseman was two-fold; his selfless play and a quarterback-like vision on the ice. He did it all quietly.

“He was not the rah-rah kid,” said Geremia, one of Makar’s earliest coaches. “He would just show up and rarely say much.”

Then again…

“He had that competitive edge you could see in his eyes,” Ovens said. “When it got to a key moment of winning or losing, he had the look to where you didn’t need to say anything. You knew he was going to be a difference-maker.”

From a young age, Makar made up for a smaller frame with deceptive strength. Charle Dumba, the father of Wild defenseman Mathew Dumba, taught Makar the finer points of the “reverse hit” — luring a larger opponent into the boards, lulling him to sleep by appearing to invite contact, but launching into him first with proper leverage and surprise timing.

Oh boy, watch the big guys fly.

“We pretend like we’re never ready, but we’re always 100-percent ready,” Dumba said. “Then we lower the boom.”

Makar and the 2009 Blackhawks battled their way to the Crowchild Challenge title game against their city rival, the Blackfoot Chiefs. It went to overtime, a 3-on-3 sudden-death period, with Makar on ice when Crowchild clinched the championship. A dramatic goal from the team’s star, right?

“Cale could have scored it,” Geremia said. “But he gave the puck up, passed it, and somebody else scored the goal. … That spoke volumes.”

***

Return to 2019 where the first-timers at Crowchild Twin dream of following in Makar’s footsteps. His face welcomes guests upon entry with Makar photographs from clipped-out newspaper articles pinned to a corkboard in the arena lobby.

Their jaws drop when Makar revisits the place where it all began as a volunteer coach at the annual Crowchild hockey school with upward of 200 youth participants.

“Cale would always make time for the kids,” Laughton said. “He’d come over and get pictures taken, sign autographs and all those kinds of things because he went to the school as a little guy. He wanted to give something back.”

Makar said: “I was fortunate to have unbelievable coaches every year growing up. They were able to understand me as a player. … Any time you get to go back there and spend time with kids is awesome.”

To the NHL world at large, Makar is a hockey prodigy, a wizard with the puck, a force-of-nature who routinely makes you stop and ask: How did he pull that off?

To the folks at Crowchild Twin, Makar is the quiet learner looking to pass before shooting, a hockey-addicted kid always on the ice, a forever-Blackhawk on a quest to win his next Crowchild Challenge, wherever it might come. All of Calgary stakes claim in his future success.

“It doesn’t just happen,” Gary Makar said. “You’ve got people who care, challenging, and the kid wants to do it. … People say it takes a village.”

And that’s when it hits you.

The hockey education of Cale Makar has only just begun.

Historical dominance

Counting the ways Cale Makar has entered the NHL record books this season.

• Fifth rookie defenseman in NHL history to record seven or more goals within a single calendar month (November).

• One of three rookie defensemen in the NHL expansion era (since 1967-68) to score at least eight goals in their first 25 games.

• One of six rookie defenseman in NHL history to assist on five consecutive team goals.

• Fourth defenseman in NHL history to record 20 or more points in his first 20 career games.

• Second defenseman in franchise history to record four points in a game (four assists, Nov. 16 at Vancouver).

Crowchild’s finest

Cale Makar’s Crowchild Blackhawks youth hockey association, renamed as the Northwest Warriors in 2012, has produced a significant number of high-profile college and NHL talent.

Forward Bob Bassen — Signed as a free agent with the Islanders in 1984. … Played 15 NHL seasons between six different teams. … Recorded 232 career points (88 goals) over 765 game appearances.

Goalie Devan Dubnyk — Selected No. 14 overall in the 2004 NHL draft by the Edmonton Oilers. … Named a 2015 second-team NHL All-Star … Currently in his 11th NHL season with a career save percentage of .915 over 481 starts.

Forward Ryan Duncan — The 2007 Hobey Baker Award winner (North Dakota). … Appeared in 66 career American Hockey League games. … Played several seasons of professional hockey in Austria.

Defenseman Mathew Dumba — Selected No. 7 overall in the 2012 NHL draft by the Minnesota Wild . … Signed a 5-year, $30-million contract in 2018. … Currently in seventh NHL season with 159 career points (59 goals) over 371 games appearances.

Forward Scott Nichol — Selected in the 11th round of the 1993 NHL draft by the Buffalo Sabres. … Played 11 NHL seasons between six different teams. … Recorded 127 points (56 goals) over 662 game appearances.

Forwards Kyle & Shawn Ostrow — Four-year scholarship hockey players for the University of Denver (Kyle 2007-’11; Shawn 2009-’13).

Other Crowchild Blackhawks selected in the NHL draft or signed to NHL contracts — forward Trevor Sim (Oilers, 1988); defenseman Mickey Elick (Rangers, 1992); forward Jared Aulin (Kings, 2000); defenseman Lawrence Nycholat (Wild, 2000); goalie Todd Ford (Maple Leafs, 2002); defenseman Dillon Heatherington (Blue Jackets, 2013).