Pressure Makes Diamonds: Will the Avs Hard Times Make For a Hard Team?

“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.”
– Muhammad Ali

My junior year of high school, I took a course called Earth Sciences, which it turned out should have instead been entitled, “How Hard Is This Rock?” My teacher at the time was working the kinks out of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-style research book that took you through a path of questions like:

Can you scratch the rock with your fingernail?
Yes (go to page 2)
No (go to page 3)

Is the rock smooth?
Yes (go to page 13)
No (go to page 17)

And so on. Most of the semester was spent with a bunch of sixteen-year-olds holding up their rock and yelling, “Mr. ScienceTeacher (name redacted to protect the innocent), is this Pyrite?”

If it wasn’t Pyrite, he’d frustratedly try to determine if it was the student or the book that was defective. Ended up being quite the adventure we all chose. BUT, it did teach me that all stones, in fact most all solids, have a “hardness” factor to them, with diamonds at or near the top of that list (Mohs scale 10), and a zillion other items (such as a copper penny having a Mohs scale around 3.5) separating it from a pearl (Mohs scale 2). Not much was below that, beside talc (Mohs scale 1), which would further explain why there are so few talc rings in the jewelry stores these days.

Wedding shopping aside, the big takeaway for me, aside from NEVER TAKE EARTH SCIENCES WITH MR. SCIENCETEACHER was: the hard stuff goes through the soft stuff. It wasn’t too hard to pick the pearl out by sheer recognition, but it was also fascinating to see how much the diamond could f– that pearl up in short order. Suddenly, diamond-tipped drill bits and such made a lot more sense. The more you know.

Sports is kind of similar, with your team displaying a pretty easily measurable level of “hardness” by the time a season is complete. Maybe nothing so specific as a “Mohs scale” to display for each team at season’s end, but one thing is a pretty direct corollary. The harder stuff goes through the softer stuff, and oftentimes pretty easily. What we as fans of a team are looking for is for a team’s number to keep getting higher, instead of lower.

Take the Colorado Rockies, for example. As recently as last season, you could argue that the Rox has slipped even below Pearl level, and were dancing somewhere around Talc. Scratchable with you fingernail, and soft as all hell. And while that was embarrassing, it also means that their sudden rise to something closer to an Opal is a massive step forward. Still pretty easily scratched, but not something so marshmallowy. The sigh of relief from Rockies fans this year to simply no longer historically suck is plain old palpable. Is the World Series in their grasp? Nooooo. At least not yet, but the trend toward Diamond is at least pointed in the right direction. We can solve the harder stuff later. Just keep getting tougher/harder/better.

The Denver Nuggets, on the other hand, were Diamonds so recently as to be frustrating the hell out of their fanbase by suddenly sliding down the Ruby-to-Topaz-to-Quartz route. Suddenly, it looks like are a lot of other teams that are built to be harder than them, and ready to go straight through them. Their toughness only came further into question as the season concluded in a first-round playoff exit, amidst high hopes they were headed back in the other direction.

The Denver Broncos have been on the upswing, and their march in the other direction – Quartz-Topaz-Ruby – has left the Broncos fanbase salivating at how close they are to being the toughest nut in the bunch to crack. Had their quarterback not had an unfortunate and late playoff setback last season, they very well might have exceeded all expectations. That’s got their loyal watchers amped up for another title run.

The only Diamond that may still be left in the mix is also the only team left in Denver currently playing for anything meaningful, the Colorado Avalanche. Suffering only their second defeat of the postseason still has some of Avs faithful back on their heels from surrendering home ice to a club that looks to be nearly as hard as them. The margins are often so narrow in any playoffs when you boil it down to the best few teams left. Maybe the Vegas Golden Knights will actually prove to be the harder substance if only for the narrow flaws a missing superstar can introduce. Time will tell as it all plays out. Avs fans are on the edges of their seats waiting to find out. No one is quite ready to hear it yet, but even the Conference Finals are a step forward from the last three exits. Still to be decided if that 10 is in them.

Three out of the big four Colorado squads decidedly on the rise. Getting harder, if only for their competitors against them. Not the worst place to be as a Colorado sports fan, if try to follow all four. If the Avs are going to win that Stanley Cup, they have two more somethings almost as tough as them to find a way through.