BSN Exclusive: Inside the moment the Avalanche finally became a team

Like the fictional characters Yossarian and Orr from Joseph Heller’s classic “Catch-22”, it wasn’t until the players of the Colorado Avalanche escaped to a certain place that they found their own peace of mind:

Sweden.

A lot of Avs fans and pundits have been asking in recent days, “When did the Avs start to really jell as a team in the season? What was the turning point?”

The answer, according to several players interviewed by BSN Denver, came on an airplane making transcontinental flights to and back from Sweden in November. It came over long games of poker on the plane, and some long talks over the new direction of the team. Off the plane, it came over long, sumptuous dinners on the streets of Stockholm, with captain and native son Gabe Landeskog acting as the sommelier, chief cuisine suggester and de facto tour guide along the cobblestone streets.

There’s no catch here; Sweden was where the 2017-18 Avalanche really got to know each other better. Sweden was where they bonded, enough to become what they became: the organization’s first playoff team since 2014.

To refresh peoples’ memory: The Avs played the Ottawa Senators twice in Stockholm in November, right after the seismic trade that sent Matt Duchene to those same Senators. It might have been a little awkward at times, seeing Duchene around the same hotel in which the teams stayed, but it didn’t stop the “new” Avs from coalescing into a much tighter-knit group.

“You get a 10-hour flight, with 20 guys together in the same cabin, and everybody’s hangin’ out and havin’ fun,” Landeskog told BSN Denver. “Then, when we got there, it was just five, six days hanging as a group. We explored Sweden and Stockholm together, and even though we lost both games, only got away with one point, it was still such a great experience. We had so many new guys come into the room throughout the off-season and with that trade, obviously, it was a chance for us to really break down a lot of the walls that we had as a group.”

While Duchene did earn some respect from his Avs teammates for playing hard throughout the first month of the season despite his desire to be traded to a team that wasn’t in “rebuild mode” anymore, it remained a tense, awkward atmosphere in the room while he was around. Reporters would always be keeping an eye out for Duchene in case he said anything, but most of the time he’d be scurrying to the sanctuary of the back rooms and avoiding eye contact.

When the trade happened, Nov. 5, during the first period of a game in Brooklyn against the Islanders, the remaining Avs players took a look around the room and, right away almost, began to communicate better. Now, they could say more what was on their minds, without fear of offending Duchene or feeling like they were walking on eggshells when he was around.

On the plane ride later that night from New York to Stockholm, players felt like they could finally exhale with the Duchene situation resolved.

“We were going to an environment like that where nobody’s got family obligations. It’s just ‘team, team, team.’ That’s where we really bonded as a group, and it was a lot of fun,” Landeskog said.

It was tough for Avs players to leave Carl Soderberg behind, though. The Swede stayed in Denver to be with his expectant wife. One thing they didn’t mind with Soderberg gone: They kept more of their money at poker. Soderberg has, teammates say, genius-level mathematic skills and the likely ability to count cards at poker. He usually cleans up at the table.

Avs star youngster Mikko Rantanen, a Finn, agreed that Sweden was the place where real team chemistry was found.

“It was huge for our team bonding,” Rantanen said. “I think it’s one of the big reasons why we’re here.”

Here, of course, is the playoffs.

“Before that trip, we were 25 guys that were playing together,” Landeskog said. “But after that, we reallly became a team.”