Watch Out for Falling Franchises

NHL expansion, Anaheim style: Name your team after a popular kids movie, carpet-bomb those kids’ parents with a relentless marketing and merchandising campaign, spend millions on pregame and mid-game entertainment, hire a bumbling mascot for the kids to laugh at, erect a bronze statue honoring the mascot, hire cheerleaders, hire a few players because you can’t have games without them, make another popular kids movie, lead the league in profit margin for three years running, trade for a star player near the end of your third season, finish that season one point shy of the playoffs.

NHL expansion, Florida style: Spend five minutes on team name and colors, spend millions on a world-class goaltender, spend a goodly sum to surround your goaltender with hard-working veteran skaters who can contribute right away, hang on to 70% of those players through your third season, set expansion record for victories in your first season, miss the playoffs by one point in your second season, make the conference finals in your third season.

NHL expansion, Colorado style: Invade Canada, pirate young, richly talented yet underachieving team out of Quebec, make Stanley Cup finals in your first season.

Say what you will about the Denver hockey experience--nickname from arena football hell, eyesore uniforms, a bunch of bandwagon-hopping Johnny Bucyk-come-latelys--but you have to admit: The system works.

Colorado has a hockey team in the Stanley Cup finals.

Not Toronto, which hasn’t been that far since 1967.

Not Chicago, which hasn’t won the cup since 1961.

Not Washington, which is now 0 for 22 in attempts to reach the Stanley Cup finals.

But Colorado has made it, finally breaking on through after so many weeks. No wonder Denver is still in a state of shell-shocked delirium. Those fans have endured literally hours of suffering, counting the days until their team, their beloved Avalanche, could at last bring an end to a drought that has toyed with their emotions and tested their devotion for nigh on eight months.

“Avalanche In Denver: The Road to The Stanley Cup” is the championship video in the making, winging us back to the franchise’s struggling nascent period of yore, the days before Patrick Roy and without Claude Lemieux, when Colorado’s love affair with major-league hockey was at its shakiest--”October 1995: The Early Minutes.”

A troubled era, that was. There were defeats on the road, defeats to the Mighty Ducks, bad food on the team charter, gridlock in the McNichols Arena parking lot. In Denver, the populace had grown weary, jaded, resigned. The pressure on Avalanche management to turn things around, to ease this city’s pain, was immense.

Changes were demanded.

Jocelyn Thibault, the original Avalanche goaltender, was sent packing.

Owen Nolan, another charter Avalanche (charter Avalanchian? charter Snowball?), was dispatched to the Siberia of the Western Conference, San Jose, as the franchise overhaul pressed onward.

Marc Crawford, the first Avalanche head coach, stayed on, but aged visibly during the agonizing days of transition. Crawford was 34 when he coached his first game in Denver. By the time he coaches his first game in a Stanley Cup championship series, he will be 35.

The culmination of Colorado’s long, hard climb was a 4-2 semifinal series triumph over Detroit, which thrust another entire city into the depths of abject despair.

Quebec may never get over the fact that the team it lost a year ago is now playing for the Stanley Cup.

According to reports, Detroit is upset as well.

Quebec is like the first wife who supports the starving artist husband as he fails off-Broadway auditions, works three jobs to pay the rent, gets IOUs for Christmas and then is dumped on the eve of the gala blockbuster premiere, missing out on the bookend Oscars for the family mantle and the trip to Cannes.

Quebec suffered with the pre-Avalanche--formerly known as the Nordiques, or, for many years, Les Dindes (French for “turkeys”)--for 16 mostly pitiful seasons. In 1989-90, the Quebec Nordiques finished 12-61-7. The next season, they were 16-50-14. From ‘87-’88 through ‘93-’94, the Nordiques qualified for the playoffs only once.

Last season, with the years of top-five draft picks finally beginning to show results, the Nordiques produced the best record on the Eastern Conference. Peter Forsberg was rookie of the year. Joe Sakic was fourth in the league in scoring. Thibault was second in the league in save percentage.

And the Nordiques, in their final season in Quebec, lost to the Rangers in the first round of the playoffs.

As Quebec bid adieu to its hockey team, cappuccino cups were pushed away and cigarettes stubbed out in disgust. Hockey fans there already knew the next chapter--dynasty-on-the-verge leaves town just in time to shower Denver, the runner-up capital of America, with case loads of hockey hardware.

From the Denver perspective, this is a wonderful way to break in a new local pastime. Instant championship contention--just add frozen water.

From the Quebec perspective, it only gets worse from here. If the Avalanche wins four more games in June, the civic slight will be complete. Imagine, Orange County, how it might have felt if the Rams had left last May and wound up representing St. Louis in the Super Bowl.

Of course, that was never much a concern here. As with Quebec, Orange County knew exactly what kind of team the new mailing address was getting.