Friday, August 20, 2010

As If We Needed Another Reason

As if we needed another reason to attend the home opener, the Avalanche have announced that they will be having a reunion for the 1995-96 Stanley Cup winning team. A lot of details are still to be released, but they did say that they will be honoring the team prior to the team's home opener on October 7th vs. the Chicago Blackhawks (whose head coach conveniently is Joel Quenneville, one of the Avs' assistant coaches back in '96).

It's only been since April that we've been able to attend an Avs game, so it's not like any of us were itching to go to the home opener anyway. Last year, it was Joe Sakic's jersey retirement ceremony and this year it's going to be honoring Denver's first professional sports championship team. The Avs may be establishing a new tradition of holding a big celebration every year when the season begins. Even if they don't plan to continue this trend, it should be a fun night for fans to see the original Avalanche team that came to Denver and won our hearts.

View the article on the Avs official site here.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Is Summer Over Yet?

August is probably the longest month of the summer for hockey fans. Even if your team is eliminated early or don't even make the playoffs, you can watch the rest of the playoffs through early June. Usually, Avs fans would have had the opportunity to attend or at least read about a prospect development camp in July. At least there was free agency (although that wasn't terribly exciting this year), and the announcement of the Burgundy and White game and the opportunity to buy tickets.

The only excitement we really have in August is that it is the last month where we have no hockey. September brings with it training camp, the Burgundy and White game, and the pre-season. Of course, the time we are all really looking forward to is the start of the regular season in early October. The season opens with the Avs hosting the 2010 Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks on October 7th.

Over the summer, we have said good bye to a few players, none really unexpected: Brett Clark and Chris Durno who went to Tampa Bay, Ruslan Salei who went to Detroit, and goaltending prospect Tyler Weiman went to Vancouver. Darcy Tucker was unsurprisingly not offered a new contract and remains as a free agent. Matt Hendricks is also still a free agent. According to Adrian Dater earlier this summer, Hendricks was made an offer by the Avs, but it was not what he was hoping for and he wanted to test the market. It's looking unlikely that he will return.

Then there were the players who returned to the Avs. Prior to free agency, the Avs announced the signings of Captain Adam Foote, goaltender Peter Budaj and left wing David Koci. Brandon Yip and Kyle Quincey both signed 2 year contracts to remain with the Avs after July 1st. Shortly before the start of free agency, the Avs traded a 2012 4th round draft pick to Phoenix for left wing Daniel Winnik. They also signed him to a 2 year contract this summer. Chris Stewart and Peter Mueller have still not signed contracts with the Avs, but are both restricted free agents. The Avs should re-sign them both, but whether or not they will still remains to be seen.

The Avs will definitely have to make some signings because they are still below the league's cap floor. That's right, not only is there a salary cap, but a salary floor, a minimum amount that the team has to spend. The Avs have not even met that salary minimum yet. With training camp starting up in about a month on September 17th (the date veterans report for physicals), it seems likely that the Avs will sign a couple more players prior to then.

The summer has been long and rather boring, with no big free agents being signed by the Avs because they didn't feel that they needed any. The argument could also be made that they don't want to spend a lot of money on big name free agents because they have so many young players who will be earning bigger contracts in the next couple of years. If you follow the NHL in general, the most interesting story was probably the ridiculous contract between Ilya Kovalchuk and the Devils which was ultimately rejected. If you are only interested in the Avalanche though, it was not a terribly exciting summer. The good news is that we are only a month away from training camp and less than 2 months away from the start of the regular season.