In the latest “Avalanche Storytime”, presented by Bender’s Sports Bar and Grill in Westminster, Adrian Dater takes a look back to 2003, the year Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne joined forces to come to the Avs as free agents, in an attempt to create a “Superteam.”
While there were some superb moments (the team was first overall in the NHL after a Feb. 12 win in Detroit), things ultimately didn’t go as well as hoped.
Adrian details the reasons why…
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Bob_W
To go further down the road of “what could’ve been”: During the following Summer, before we knew the lockout was going to wipe out the coming season the Avs hired Joel Quinneville as head coach. Looking in hindsight what if they could have kept Kariya and/or Selanne and let coach Q manage that team. Of course it was not to be. After the lockout Foote and Forsberg were gone and Quinneville was saddled with a bunch of aging players who the Avs couldn’t unload because of their high salaries and the salary cap. By the time they began to get out from under that a few years later Quinneville was gone.
adriandater
The Avs also signed Vincent Damphousse in that time. He never played. He retired when the season was cancelled
AvsFinn
This was very much a Tony Granato fiasko as well. He was benching Selanne and playing him on third and fourth lines at times.
There was some contractual reason to why Kariya took such a small share of that money. Can’t remember what that was.. but it had something to do with becoming an unrestricted free agent after and those obviously worked differently back then than now.