Adrian Dater - 100 Things Avalanche Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die

For my wife, Heidi, and son, Tommy

Contents

Foreword by Joe Sakic

In May 1995 I was a 25-year-old hockey player who had spent my life to that point playing in Canadaas a kid in Burnaby, British Columbia; as a junior in Swift Current, Saskatchewan; and as an NHL player in Quebec City. But one day in May 1995, my Nordiques teammates and I got some shocking news: we would all be moving, starting in a few months, to play hockey in the United States, in Denver, Colorado.

Most of us had barely even heard of Denver. The only things most of us knew were that John Elway played quarterback for the Broncos and that it was supposed to have a lot of snow. Little did I know that I would spend the rest of my playing career in Denver, that my children would all be born there, and that my family and I would call it home to this day.

Quebec City will always be a special place for me, as I started my career there and the fans are great hockey fans. But mostly all I knew as a player there was losing. That all changed when the franchise relocated to Denver and became known as the Colorado Avalanche.

I was very fortunate to be the captain of the Avalanche from 1995 until I retired in 2009. We won a lot of games and were fortunate enough to win two Stanley Cups in that time. The fans of Colorado supported us tremendously right from day one, and I can speak for all the players in saying they played a big part in our fast success in Denver.

Winning is what you strive for as a player, and it is the thing you remember and savor the most as a player. Thats why so many of my former teammates and I have so many great memories to look back on as players in Denver.

Adrian Dater covered our team for every year I played in Denver, and more after that. He has done a great job telling the stories of what made the Avalanche such a memorable team, and some of the things that make Denver and Colorado such a special place.

This book tells stories of the people and events that made for a great first 20 years of the Avalanches time in Denver. Hopefully there will be other books someday that recount other memories and success stories for the Avalanche. It was always with tremendous pride that I was able to wear the Avalanche logo on my sweater, a logo that didnt even exist on that May day in 1995.

This book is a must-have for Avalanche fans who want to know how it all happened. To have played a part in many of the fun stories in this book will always be a humbling thing for me.

So thank you, Avalanche fans, for playing such a big part in all of this too. Without the people of Denver and Colorado as a whole, none of this book could ever have been written.

Joe Sakic

1. 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 NBAs Denver Nuggets, and now they had another tenant to play at McNichols Sports Arena.

I knew this wouldnt 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 th . 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, thats 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 Id become a full-time staff writer myself soon, and thanks to the Post s sports editor, Mike Connelly, thats 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 youre not ready yet, but to my everlasting gratitude, he gave me the shot.

As fireworks light the arena behind him, Colorado Avalanche goalie Stephane Fiset skates on to the ice as the first member of the new team to be introduced to the home crowd.

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 dont 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 Im 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 didnt 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 youll 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.

2. One Year, One Stanley Cup