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100 Things Avalanche Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die

Triumph Books LLC

May 24, 1995: The NHL Returns to Denver

I still remember the phone call from Paul Jacobson, the media relations director for COMSAT Video Enterprises. It came at about 7:00 pm on May 24, 1995.

"The team is ours," Jacobson told me.

The team was the Quebec Nordiques, and it had just been sold to COMSAT, a company whose main business was the burgeoning advent of movies-on-demand, particularly in hotel rooms. COMSAT also owned the NBA's Denver Nuggets, and now they had another tenant to play at McNichols Sports Arena.

I knew this wouldn't be a pure scoop for my newspaper, the Denver Post. While I got the original (front-page!) scoop on February 18 that COMSAT had put in a $75 million offer for the Quebec Nordiques, the actual sale went down on the night of the 24. With no viable Internet then, you had to hold on to any breaking news until the paper went to press in the wee hours of the morning. Yes, kids, that's how things used to be done.

Jacobson said it was only fair that he also call reporter Curtis Eichelberger of the rival Rocky Mountain News, who had been my competitor on the story for the previous few months. I was a stringer for the Post, paid by the story (usually no more than $40, which is what I got for that front-page scoop in February), and Eichelberger was a full-time staffer at the News, but that was fine. I had a feeling I'd become a full-time staff writer myself soon, and thanks to the Post's sports editor, Mike Connelly, that's exactly what happened on June 6, 1995. Connelly could have hired some experienced NHL beat writer and just told a part-time, no-benefits kid like me "Sorry, but you're not ready yet," but to my everlasting gratitude, he gave me the shot.

For the next 19 years, I would cover the soon-to-be renamed Colorado Avalanche as the regular beat writer. More important, on May 24 the good citizens of Colorado got an NHL team again. The growing economy of Denver, the good geography of the state, and a league that had good momentum in the US all were big factors in the city getting a rare second chance at NHL hockey. From 1976 to 1982 the city had a team called the Colorado Rockies, but it was a tire fire from day one. Bad trades, bad draft picks, and short-pocketed ownership led to the sale of the team in 1982 to John J. McMullen, and a transfer to the New Jersey Meadowlands, where they were renamed the Devils.

One of the first quotes I got from an anonymous NHL executive (and I don't even remember who it was now) after the sale was, "Denver is going to get itself one hell of a team." That would prove to be an understatement.

The Colorado Avalanche was a juggernaut right away in the Mile High City. They (technically the Colorado Avalanche is an it, but this my book and I'm calling them a they from here on out, and wow, does that feel good) won the Stanley Cup their first season in town. They would go on to advance to the Western Conference Finals in five of the next six seasons, winning another Cup in 2001. They would win a division title in their first eight years in Denver and, combined with one in 1994 in Quebec, would establish a new NHL record.

The next 10 years didn't go as well. As of 2016 no Avs team had reached the conference finals in 14 years. The great players either retired or left because the team could no longer afford them. Despite several high first-round draft picks, the team missed the playoffs several times and saw steep drops in attendance after setting an NHL record with 487 straight sellouts.

The Avs are likely to have a stronghold on the people of Colorado for a long time, however. They were the first team to give the city and state a major pro sports championship. They had several Hall of Fame players, and there was rarely a hint of public scandal with anyone in the organization. They jump-started the passion for hockey in the state to the point that dozens of new youth leagues were formed and many new rinks built.

The following 99 chapters take a closer look at the people who made the Avalanche a special team, along with what made, and continues to make, the surrounding area a great place to live or visit. A lot of the book is written in the first person, which I hope you'll forgive me for doing. But I was there for it all, and I feel well qualified to tell their story in a more personal way.

I hope whoever tells the next 20 years of the Avs' story has as much fun as I did in the first 20.

One Year, One Stanley Cup

The Quebec Nordiques played in the NHL for 23 years, without ever winning a Stanley Cup or even making it to a Cup Final. By the summer of 1996, the newly renamed Colorado Avalanche had played one season in Denver and won one Stanley Cup. Life isn't fair.

Quebec City is an astonishingly pretty place, founded in 1608 by Samuel de Champlain. Fortified walls, called ramparts, surround the city, remnants of the many battles it saw, including those from the American Revolution (the American Revolutionaries lost the battle, which is why the city stayed in the hands of British rule). The St. Lawrence River runs through it, and the city's name was derived from the Algonquin word Kebec, which means "Where the river narrows."

The sport of ice hockey was founded in nearby Montreal, with the first organized game being played in 1875. It quickly spread to Quebec City, where for more than a century a deep passion for the game was ingrained in most inhabitants.

By 1995, however, financially supporting an NHL team became a problem in Quebec City. There were plenty of people to fill the Colisee Pepsi arena but not enough fat-cat corporations to spend $100,000 a year or more on the newly created luxury boxes. So the Quebec Nordiques of 1994–95 became the Colorado Avalanche of 1995–96.

Pierre Lacroix, the general manager, remembered when he first stepped foot on Denver soil on June 1, 1995. The team still didn't have a new name, most everything from the Nordiques days was boxed up to the ceiling of the team's new workplace, McNichols Sports Arena, and players with children needed to be moved in by July because of new school registration deadlines.

Despite all the off-ice chaos that surrounds any franchise relocation, the Avalanche won a championship that first season. The team was already blessed with a solid roster, partially built through years of failure that resulted in high draft picks, and astute trades. One of the biggest and best, an incredible blockbuster that sent Eric Lindros to Philadelphia for several players and draft picks and $15 million in cash, would yield a Hall of Famer in a young Swede named Peter Forsberg.

Former Nordiques owner Marcel Aubut, a rotund, flamboyant throwback of a character, actually traded Lindros twice at the same time — once to the New York Rangers and once to the Flyers. An arbitrator named Larry Bertuzzi — the uncle of a kid named Todd who would later play a role in Avs history — had to sort out the mess, eventually deciding in favor of the Flyers.

The crippling economics of modern sport in a small market forced Aubut to sell the team for $75 million, with the final transaction coming in a San Francisco hotel conference room on May 24, 1995. Aubut's hand trembled as he signed the official deal, as he knew he would instantly be cast by many in his home city as as the villain who let the Nordiques leave town.

The Avs were already an excellent team in the early stages of the 1995–96 season, but Lacroix was convinced they wouldn't become a champion until three significant areas were upgraded. The first was in goal, where despite promising young netminders named Stephane Fiset and Jocelyn Thibault, the team was unproven. On December 6, 1996, Lacroix stunned the hockey world by acquiring two-time Stanley Cup champ and three-time Vezina Trophy winner Patrick Roy.

The team also needed a veteran forward who could add some grit and who had won Cups before to help mentor the young talent up front. That need was addressed with the acquisition of Claude Lemieux for holdout Wendel Clark (technically Lemieux was acquired for Steve Thomas as part of a three-way deal involving the New York Islanders and New Jersey Devils).

The third area to upgrade was an offensive defenseman, someone who could help give the team more of a two-pronged attack. Enter Sandis Ozolinsh, who was acquired within the first month in a straight-up deal for promising forward Owen Nolan.

Despite those three deals, the Avs entered the 1996 playoffs as considerable underdogs to represent the Western Conference in the Championship Finals against the Detroit Red Wings, a mighty team that had amassed 62 wins, including a 7–0 win over Colorado late in the season.

The Avs almost didn't make it out of the first round, but they hung tough to overcome early jitters and beat the Vancouver Canucks in six games. In that series, the Avs got some luck with the absence of Canucks star forward Pavel Bure, who was injured. A multiple 60-goal scorer and future Hall of Famer, Bure no doubt would have made things much more difficult for a team whose defense, as Canucks coach Pat Quinn memorably put it, had "some marshmallows back there."

In the second round, against a very tough Chicago Blackhawks team, the Avs got more good fortune. Top goalie Ed Belfour, along with Murray Craven, missed Game 2 allegedly after getting sick eating lyonnaise potatoes at a Denver Morton's restaurant (Morton's denied it, or that anyone else got sick). Tony Amonte was lost early in the series to a leg injury, and All-Star defenseman Chris Chelios missed a game because of a listed "equipment problem" that was actually his leg being numb from an overinjection of cortisone by the Chicago team doctor. Down 2–1 in the series, the Avs were on the brink of going down 3–1 when Chicago star Jeremy Roenick came in on a breakaway on Roy but never got a shot off after being blatantly hooked from behind by Ozolinsh. Referee Andy Van Hellemond, who had blown a call against the Nordiques to cost a game in a playoff series the year before against the Rangers, swallowed his whistle.

Joe Sakic one-timed Alexei Gusarov's pass past Belfour in triple overtime to even the series, and the Avs would prevail in six games, winning Game 6 on a double-overtime goal by Ozolinsh.

In the Western Conference Finals against the Wings, the Avs quickly fell behind in Game 1 on a Paul Coffey goal, but then good fortune started to smile once again. Playing a puck on net from deep in the left corner, Stephane Yelle's shot would have sailed harmlessly to the other side of the ice if it hadn't been touched. But inexplicably, Coffey shot the puck right into his own net. It was as if he had temporarily thought he played for the Avs and was trying to one-time a pass in from a teammate. The Avs pulled out a 3–2 OT win on a long shot by Mike Keane, and Roy was sensational in a 3–0 Game 2 shutout at Joe Louis Arena.

The Avs won two of the next four games to close out the series, but not before a major rivalry was started between the two teams that would dominate the NHL for most of the next six years.

That left one opponent to conquer for the Cup. It would be a young franchise named the Florida Panthers, an underdog group that relied on a defensive system that had come into vogue in the league called the neutralzone trap.

In Game 1, at McNichols Arena (where upper-bowl seats cost as little as $16, a ridiculously low amount compared to today's prices), the Panthers were playing the trap to perfection by late in the second period. They had a 1–0 lead on a fluky Tom Fitzgerald goal, which was looking like it might be enough for goalie John Vanbiesbrouck.

But then the Avs struck for three straight goals — by Scott Young, Uwe Krupp, and Mike Ricci — taking a 3–1 win. Despite Florida coach Doug MacLean using a column by the Denver Post's Mark Kiszla that made fun of the Panthers' boring style of play as bulletin-board, press-conference material, the Avs crushed Florida 8 — 1 in Game 2.

Game 3 started out well for the Panthers, who took a 2–1 lead into the second period. But they lost and did not score a goal the rest of the series. Game 4 ended at approximately 1:00 am Eastern Standard Time, on a Uwe Krupp goal at 4:31 of the third overtime of a scoreless game.

A team that didn't have a name 12 months before now had its name on the Stanley Cup. It is one of sports' more remarkable stories, and the Avs continued to create many more great memories in the years to come.

December 6, 1995 — Roy Arrives

I had it, and I was too chicken to write it.

That's one of the first memories I have of the morning of December 6, 1995. My phone rang at about 6:00 am, and Avs media relations man Jean Martineau was on the other line.

"We're going to announce the acquisition of Patrick Roy in a release in a few minutes," Martineau said. "You're the first to know."

Well, not really. Everybody in the hockey world had heard it by that moment. There was no Internet to write for then, so my story on the blockbuster trade of Patrick Roy to the Avalanche, along with Mike Keane, would have to wait 24 hours. I was excited and energized, and kicking myself.

The night before, the Avs had played the San Jose Sharks at McNichols Sports Arena, in a game won by the Avs in a lopsided score. My lead paragraph on the game went like this: "Well, the Colorado Avalanche wouldn't have needed Patrick Roy on this night, at least."

On December 3 the Canadiens had announced that Roy, their two-time Stanley Cup champion and two-time Conn Smythe winner, was suspended from the team following a blowup with his coach, Mario Tremblay, in a blowout loss to the Detroit Red Wings at the Montreal Forum.

By the afternoon of December 5, I was hot on the scent that the Avs were a prime player to land Roy in a potential trade. Still, nobody really believed it would happen. Patrick Roy — Saint Patrick, the kid from Quebec idolized by everyone in the province, a two-time Cup winner and three-time Vezina Trophy winner? Really, the Canadiens might trade him, after just a "one of those things" blowup during a game?

It didn't seem possible. And it sure wouldn't have been possible, if the Avalanche franchise was still based in Quebec City, as it had been just seven months prior. While Roy was actually born in Quebec City, he was hated by the city's hockey faithful, because that's where the Nordiques played, and the hated Canadiens were just two hours down the road. The Nordiques and Canadiens had a serious rivalry, and there would have been zero chance Montreal management ever would have traded Roy to Quebec.

But with the franchise now in Denver, and Roy and Tremblay at odds, Canadiens GM Rejean Houle felt he had no choice but to turn the page and deal Roy. Actually, as revealed in a book written by Roy's father, Michel, titled Patrick Roy: Winning, Nothing Else, the Habs were set to deal their superstar goalie to Colorado a couple months before.

Serge Savard was the GM of the Canadiens to start the 1995–96 season, and after a slow start for his team, he decided to trade Roy. According to Michel Roy's book, Savard had a deal worked out with Avs GM Pierre Lacroix in which Roy would go to Colorado and Owen Nolan would go to Montreal. But on October 17, 1995, Savard was fired by the Canadiens, and the Roy deal seemingly fell through with his ouster.

Then came the game against the Red Wings on December 2 at the Forum. The back story on that game is a little more fascinating in hindsight. Tremblay, in his first year as coach of the Canadiens, boasted to the Montreal press after a victory in Detroit earlier that season, indirectly dissing Red Wings coach Scotty Bowman in the process. Bowman had been Tremblay's coach on the Canadiens in the 1970s. Tremblay and Bowman had some issues in their time as player and coach, and when Tremblay and his Canadiens went into Joe Louis Arena and beat Bowman's mighty Wings, the Habs coach did some chirping.

Bowman rarely forgot any slight, and so when Detroit came into Montreal for the early December game, he was ready for revenge. Detroit got out to a quick lead, and kept pouring it on. When Detroit made it a 6–1 game, most everyone — Roy especially — expected Tremblay to call it a night and pull his No. 1 goalie. Hockey tradition holds that once a game is out of reach, the losing No. 1 goalie gets the rest of the night off, much like a pitcher in baseball who gets the hook from the manager.

For whatever reason, Tremblay left Roy in the game. The score became 7–1, then 8–1 and 9–1. That's when Tremblay finally decided to pull Roy. By then, though, Roy was steaming mad. He stomped past Tremblay on the bench and stopped to chat with Canadiens president Ronald Corey, whom he told he had just played his last game with the team. As Roy walked past Tremblay again back to his spot on the end of the bench, Roy and Tremblay glared eye-to-eye. Roy told him in French, "Et tu compris?" which means "Do you understand?"

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Excerpted from 100 Things Avalanche Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die by Adrian Dater. Copyright © 2016 Adrian Dater. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books LLC.
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