I remember even if most do not. I remember the smell of freshly zamboni’d ice, the slight chill in the arena air, the camaraderie that one feels when surrounded by other zealots, and electricity as the beloved and talented Colorado Avalanche skated from the tunnel.
Now, alas, the landscape professional sports in Denver is almost post-apocolyptically bleak the moment Broncos season ends.
The Nuggets are competent but will never win a NBA title as the league is currently constituted.
It is far more likely that 3 monkeys and a broken typewriter will pen and publish the next “Game of Thrones” than the Monfort’s will field a baseball team that isn’t an embarrassment to civilization and to typing monkeys.
I have accepted the failings of the Rockies ownership, baseball at altitude, and the entirety of the NBA structure with relative ambivalence but I have small stomach for the situation with the Avalanche.
Here is a team with a newer arena, a passionate fan base, and a history of excellence. Mercifully for places like Edmonton and Calgary (Canadians, as we all know are generally moose-loving ne’er-do-wells), a salary cap precludes teams like the Rangers from trying to price people off the ice.
The Avs have drafted relatively well over the past few years and have a strong young team heading into the future. Sadly, it is more than likely that the present ownership will simply do the bare minimum to ensure some return on their investment at the least amount of risk, dooming this franchise to mediocrity as we become the farm team for owners with balls.
Unlike the bumbling Monforts who caught lightening in a bottle one year and now think it has earned them the right to fleece their fan base in perpetuity, the Kroenke’s are just…..well….disinterested, focusing all their love and attention on an NBA franchise that is doomed to mediocrity.
When it comes to the Avs, these clowns throw around nickels as though they were manhole covers while treating the Nuggets like a beloved but demanding mistress, showering them with money and furs.
This past offseason is a perfect illustration. The Nuggets just happily paid $44,000,000 over 4 years for a talented but unproven and underachieving project player in Javale McGee who is famous only for showing up every 10th game and for having a questionable work ethic and next to no leadership qualities.
The Nuggets brass gushed on TV and radio about what a screaming deal they got on a player with so much potential upside, citing, among other things, the fact that other teams would have paid him if they didn’t.
On the other hand, examine the case of 21 year old Ryan O’Reilly from the Avalanche. He is a respected, productive, and hard-working player who, despite his youth, led the team in scoring in 2011. For this guy, ownership balking at matching the 4 million per year deal he currently has with a Russian team in the KHL.
Our hockey team is just a few solid veterans away from becoming a real contender for the next 10 years and these jackwagons are busy hemorrhaging money at these NBA losers at the expense of the franchise that put Denver on the map for championship cities and held the league record for consecutive sell-outs. instead, ownership would prefer to wallow 20 million below the cap and toss money at the Nuggets
The Avs have a chance at greatness that the Nuggets will never even approach until the NBA stops coddling the big markets and creates a structure where refs call games fairly and teams not named New York, Brooklyn, LA, Miami, or Boston have the same shot that everyone else does at obtaining and retaining players.
My position is this: If you are not going to try and win, get out of the game. Take your Walmart money and bugger off. With the new CBA finally in place there should be absolutely no shortage of buyers. Let someone who actually gives a rip about hockey take over and run this franchise so that hope and joy can exist in our fair city sometime other than football season.
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