Philly Fans Will Boo You...They Will.

I start out this post with a quote from Ray Liota's character in "GoodFellas." It's right at the end, when he is testifying against his former Mob bosses after getting busted by the Feds:

"Anything I wanted was a phone call away. Free cars. The keys to a dozen hideout flats all over the city. I bet twenty, thirty grand over a weekend and then I'd either blow the winnings in a week or go to the sharks to pay back the bookies... Didn't matter. It didn't mean anything. When I was broke, I'd go out and rob some more. We ran everything... Everything was for the taking. And now it's all over... That's the hardest part. Today everything is different. There's no action. I have to wait around like everyone else. I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook."

This might be an interesting quote to preface a post about hockey, but bear with me, it's fitting. For the last decade, one of my most favorite vices has been my love for the NHL and the Colorado Avalanche hockey club. We've had a heck of a run since the club moves from Quebec at the beginning of the 1995 season, a season they capped with a colossal battle with the now bitter rivals from Detroit in the playoffs and a Stanley Cup victory. Another title has come to the Mile High City since that time and many more battles with the hated Wings have ensued (see Claude Lemiuex, also see Darren McCarty.) The Wings would start signing stars, and the Avs countered by bringing in "hired guns" every year, guys in the last year of their deal traded for about mid season, basically auditioning for a long term contract. The list includes some pretty prominent folks: Ray Bourqe, Rob Blake, Darius Kasparitus, etc... We engaged in what amounted to an arms race against the Red Wings for many years.

Then, in 2001 the rumblings began. People began talking about crazy things like a salary cap. The owners attempted to throw the blame on skyrocketing salaries of the players. Basically, the owners had to impose a limit on their line of credit because they had started overspending like a high school sophomore at the Mall of America with mom's MasterCard. No worries though, they had three years to figure it out. Three friggin years later, there was no resolution, and four friggin years later, there was a new NHL with a new salary cap. Basically, NHL franchises had more garage sales than the classified ads, dumping players all over, and Colorado, with its larger than average payroll, had some decisions to make. There was one big decision to make: Do they keep Adam Foote, a premier defenseman, or do you keep Peter Forsberg, who when healthy is in the 99.99 percentile of players in the world? No amount of fuzzy math in the world could let them keep both.

Then, the UNBELIEVABLE happened. As of Thursday, August 4, 2005, Peter Forsberg and Adam Foote are no longer property of the Colorado Avalanche. Foote decided to take the money in C-Bus and Forsberg escaped to Philadelphia. This, along with an aging nucleus (see Joe Sackic), and a changing landscape in the NHL in which teams most teams received a badly needed fresh start, the large payroll teams are in trouble.

As a fan, I no longer have the luxury of the omnipresent thought that we have Peter Forsberg and you don't. I can't relish in the fact that we have Adam Foote to find the opposing team's best player and eat his lunch for him. It's taken away the aura that on any given day, the Avalanche was as good or better than anything the rest of the NHL could throw at them. Of course this doesn't mean I'm jumping ship. I got to see two Stanley Cups won by my boys and got to root for the greatest netminder of all time in Patrick Roy.

I have to try to put a happy face on the recent events. Hopefully it will give a chance for former Spartan John Michael Liles to prosper. Maybe they save that money and make a run at a big free agent next year, or sign some talent yet this year. But, I can't help feeling like Henry Hill at the end of GoodFellas. The Avalanche fan is now just a average nobody who has to live life like a schnook. For now.

I'm finished,
Nate