It was impossible. It simply couldn’t be done. For the few hundred years they’d been measuring and trying, no one could break a four minute mile.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried it. I tried running a quarter mile once in less than 60 seconds, and truly thought I might die. It’s a hell of a fast clip, and to keep it going for the full mile, you can see why it was deemed damned near impossible. People as early as the 1700’s claimed to have managed it, but no one was ever measured pulling it off.

And then, in 1954, Roger Bannister broke the mark for the first time (for sure) in recorded history. After hundreds, if not thousands, of years… a man had finally run a mile in under four minutes. Who knows when it might ever happen again, if ever?

Two months later, Bannister and a gent he was racing (John Landy) both broke the barrier. Suddenly, runners were breaking it left and right. Ten years after Bannister first did it, the nation’s first high-schooler to break it came through. Now dozen of high school kids have done it. In total, nearly 1,700 humans have now accomplished the feat. With their feet.

Sorry.

But it does go to show that we as humans often have another gear we haven’t attained, something we have aspired to attain as a species that finally falls before our all-too-limited-unlimited selves, whether it’s Everest or Fermat, we see a summit or line uncrossed, and will ourselves to getting there. When we do, that long-held belief that something was unattainable for us suddenly shatters and we see that we are now the masters we’d long longed to be.

So it is for these Colorado Avalanche, after these last few years of struggles and second-round dismissals. You could see the albatross starting to hang on this team like a foulness, with last season’s exit weighing on them especially. When they found themselves going back to St. Louis in the second round this season for a Game 6 that hadn’t needed to be, you felt the sense of relaxation and calm the team had fostered all year tighten ever so slightly. Had the Avs lost that sixth game in Missouri, there would have been an incredible amount of pressure on them to come home and finally cross that seemingly impossible line.

Who knows how the third round might have been different if they’d placed so much pressure on themselves? Thankfully, this team has matured to a point we’d never have to find out.

After a sweep of the Conference Finals, Colorado had to be feeling pretty good about themselves, even with the possibility of running into this Tampa Bay juggernaut. They’ve proven themselves to be the class of the league, all the way to this Stanley Cup Finals. But still, there had to be a wondering… Do we belong here? Can we finally cross this final hurdle? After so many unexpected flameouts, will we ever reach our goal?

For over a decade as this Avalanche squad has been built, there has been an organization-wide belief in their ability to right this ship. A faith that they could move forward. Beliefs and faiths can be tested, as this team has seen time and again, running into yet another hurdle that kept them from their ultimate goal. They’d believed they were good enough to win it all. Would they ever know for sure?

After Wednesday night, the answer is now a resounding yes. After starting out so nervously they could barely stay on their skates, and after losing a solid and hard-won two-goal lead in less than a minute, this Colorado squad did the same thing they’ve been doing in the face of adversity all season long. They got back up. They played their absolutely incredible best, but not an ounce further. They bullied the bullies, and proved themselves the better team, at least on that night.

Now? Now they know. This is no longer a matter of faith or belief. The Avalanche won convincingly on the biggest stage in the world, and now see beyond a shadow of a doubt they can win it all. Whether they do so this Finals or not is now both tantalizingly close and suddenly less ethereal. Even if they don’t skate away with the Cup this year, this team knows in its bones that it has what it takes to win it all. Knows it. Doesn’t believe it. Faced the dragon. Whupped its ass one of four prerequisite times. Incredibly, that may be the final piece of magic this incredible team needed to win three more and seal the deal.

Knowledge is power, dear Avs. Bring that shiny Cup home.