Avalanche Roundtable: Favorite Avalanche moments

The NHL has thrown around a handful of proposals to return to the ice recently and we’ll definitely tackle those in time when they narrow them down to something a little more specific that doesn’t drastically change days later.

For now, one of our subscribers requested a roundtable topic and I’m happy to oblige. If anyone else has a particular topic of discussion you’d like to see, just leave a comment here on this post and we’ll tackle it!

By request, today’s topic: What are some of our favorite Avalanche moments excluding winning the Stanley Cup? Let’s go with three each to get a little variance in case we all pick Game 82.

AJ: Taking the obvious Stanley Cup moments out of this makes it an interesting list. I’ve always been a big fan of the front office side of sports and those are usually the moments that get my dander up the most so I’ll start with those.

It may not have worked out the way we wanted, but when the Avs signed Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne as a package deal, it was the building of an unthinkable superpower. They were two surefire Hall of Fame players joining up with Joe Sakic and Peter Forsberg and it should have made for some of the most incredible hockey of that era. We know how it ended but the excitement of that day will always resonate with me.

The other off-ice move that I’ll always remember was the drafting of Cale Makar. By 2017, we’d seen Colorado draft in the top 10 five times since 2009 and none of those selections had been on a defenseman, which the Avs were still desperately looking for. Makar coming out of the AJHL as an older birthday is probably the only reason he got to the fourth pick but the Avs aren’t complaining. It was also my first live draft experience and it was an incredible day all around. For a lot of reasons, the Makar draft will always have a special place in my heart.

On the ice, I’ll go with Joe Sakic’s retirement night. The crowd was insane and it was the debut of Matt Duchene and Ryan O’Reilly. It felt like a symbolic passing of the torch and the underdog Avs opened up that year with a blowout victory in which both rookies contributed and would kickstart a very fun and unlikely playoff run. Like Kariya and Selanne above, it didn’t end the way we all wanted but how special that night was will always stand out to me in Avs history.

Evan: Alright, I’ll go way back. My favorite player growing up was Valeri Kamensky, so I have to throw in his between the legs spinning goal against Florida, as that was glorious. You know what else was glorious? When he finally had enough and just sucker-punched Ulf Samuelsson. I’m sure a lot of other players in the league at the time were happy to see that one.

I’m going to count those as one since it’s the same guy, but with another I’ll pick Game 2 of the 2014 series against Minnesota with MacKinnon to Stastny, behind the back to Landeskog for the goal. That was a much less stressful game than the other ones and some pretty goals, but none prettier than that, in my opinion.

For number three, I will go with the Sakic retirement night. I know it didn’t turn out in the end, but that was Duchene and O’Reilly’s first game, and it felt like the beginning of something special. The retirement ceremony itself was tremendous, and there was an electric feeling in the building. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess with those two guys, but for that night alone, something felt different.

Rudo: It will come as no surprise that Peter Forsberg’s legendary one-man come back versus the Panthers tops my list. If his status as a Swedish hockey god wasn’t already established that certainly sealed it. Just more proof that he was truly a special player that could do things only a handful in the history of the game could.

For a much more recent one, I’ll take Hejduk’s retirement night. That game is where it first set in that there was a changing of the guard in the central division. The Avs caught them in the middle of what would go on to be a ten-game win streak, Duchene was gone, Hejduk was the last of the old gods to retire. Everything came together perfectly as the Avs smashed Minnesota and both franchises have had drastically different trajectories since. Every point mattered and these two ended up being just as important as game 82’s, with the cherry on top of six passed Dubnyk.

For a third one I will take Nathan MacKinnon’s first playoff goal. After years of watching a team that never seemed to have the talent of a true game-breaker, that was the moment. The turn of the page the future to come distilled and bottle into a pure form of this is what’s next. It took a couple years for MacK to finally get there on an everyday basis but that was the first time on the biggest stage.